Homestar Runner's Donnie Darko
by Radioactive
Summary: Donnie Darko story plus Homestar Runner characters equals this! One more attempt at a Homestar crossover. Strong Bad is Donnie. Homestar is Frank. Don't give up hope, I've just been busy lately.
1. Sleepwalking

Author's Notes: Okay, admittedly, I haven't been having very good luck with Homestar Runner crossovers, but if I can _just_ write this one without it getting deleted, my faith in the world will be renewed. If this _is_ deleted, then I will plunge myself into a pit of darkness, as well as delete _Zaphod's Trial_ without finishing it. Okay? Okay.

P.S. Fine. Homestar will _not_ have arms, but I'm not writing Homestar's speech impediment (as in, w's instead of r's). You might as well write _everything_ phonetically.

CAST

Donnie Darko  
Strong Bad

Eddie Darko  
Coach Z

Elizabeth Darko  
What's Her Face

Samantha Darko  
The Ugly One

Rose Darko  
So and So

Frank  
Homestar Runner

Gretchen Ross  
Strong Sad

Jim Cunningham  
Bubs

Seth Devlin  
Strong Mad

Sean Smith  
Homsar

Ronald Fisher  
Pom Pom

Kitty Farmer  
The King of Town

Principal Cole  
The Umpire

Kenneth Monitoff  
Homeschool Winner

Karen Pomeroy  
Marzipan

Roberta "Grandma Death" Sparrow  
The Poopsmith

Lilian Thurman  
The Cheat

All Donnie Darko characters, names and related idicia are copyright © 2001 Pandora, Inc.

All Homestar Runner characters, names and related idicia are copyright © 2000 Harmless Junk, Inc.

Start play!

———————————————————————————————————————————————————

HOMESTAR RUNNER'S _DONNIE DARKO_

**October 1st, 2003  
****  
10:35 AM**

The tall, green hills rolled over the landscape, theiremerald surface surrounding a beautifuland completley stillpond, as a low wind rustled the grass and cattails around the edges of the water. A low hush of sound was heard as the breeze skidded across the pond—the only sound to be heard.

That is, just for a few seconds, when another sound was heard—a low murmuring.

Then there was a few more grunts and murmurs, followed by a figure, lying on the hill, slowly rising up.

It was lying on the ground, its face getting scratched by the grass.

The figure quickly stood up and shook its head back and forth and coughed, squinting its eyes and blinking in the piercing glare of the sunrise.

The figure slowly turned its head around, various cricks cracking in its neck.

It slowly rotated its head in a circle once more and turned forward, and looked out at the lake, glistening in the sun.

"Well, this is weird," muttered the figure. "I've certainly slept in better hotels than _this_, I can tell you right now! Um…wait…who exactly is 'you?' There isn't anyone even here! Oh, great, I'm talking to myself now. Okay, I'm gonna stop right…now!There, stopped. Oh—wait—oh, man! Again! Okay, right…now. Now. Now. Now. Now!"

There was a pause.

"Okay, there we go," said the figure.

And he began his journey home.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————

**October 1st, 2003  
****  
11:03 AM**

WELCOME TO FREE COUNTRY, USA  
_"Some places are worse, probably!"_

Strong Bad passed the welcome sign and walked down a long low red brick wall that ran alongside the street and stretched through the town.

Normally, it was an area for one to stand at and reflect, but when you wake up five miles from home in October, you're freezing cold and you want to get indoors as soon as possible.

He shivered in the cold air. A gust of exhaust billowed past him as a silver '73 Gremlin AMC drove past him. He gave it no second thought.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————

**October 1st, 2003**

**1:07 PM**

He arrived at his house to see his roommate Coach Z out in the yard. Coach Z stuck a match and tossed it on to a pile of leaves. A girl who rented one of the rooms in their house, Kristine (otherwise known as So and So), walked by the leaf fire and coughed loudly in the smoke. Strong Bad laughed to himself.

He walked past the trampoline where a friend of So and So (also renting a room) named Joy (otherwise known as The Ugly One) had got tangled in the netting around the trampoline. Strong Bad laughed again.

And he passed the final one in the trio of friends renting out rooms in his and Coach Z's house, Jennifer (otherwise known as What's Her Face) reading a book called _The Strongest Man In The World Contest_ while she was sitting on a beach chair on the lawn next to the trampoline.

Strong Bad paused for a little while, and then ran over to her and hurled the book to the ground. He laughed again.

He walked into the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator, grumbling angrily to himself about what he had just read on the dry-erase board. There were two things written on it, both in different handwriting.

_Where's Strong Bad?_

_Who cares?_

———————————————————————————————————————————————————

**October 1st, 2003**

**6:02 PM**

It was dinner. They were eatingburgers and mashed potates, and drinking limeade.

"Nothing is cool," remarked What's Her Face.

"Oh, I beg to differ," said Coach Z. "Tha Wu-Tang Clan is da baeyrmb!"

There were only three people there. The Ugly One and So and So had decided to eat out at a Pan-Asian restaurant. They had 911 on stand-by.

"The Wu-Tang Clan is a rap group, and you're a creepy old man."

"Exarctly!"

"Doesn't that make you a poser?"

"Naw, man! I'm down."

"Down with a bad back."

"Well, I'd like to see yous have a good back when you walk around with a dis 35-pound medallion around your neck."

"You got that thing engraved to say Z for $50,000."

"What a deal, eh?"

"Okay, let's put it like this," interrupted Strong Bad. "You're both losers and weirdos."

"Well, if I get intoDortugal University next year, I can afford to be weird. I'm a college student," said What's Her Face. She then retorted, "Oh, and you're calling _me_ weird? You're the one with no fingers."

"Nice try, but leave the insults to professionals," muttered Strong Bad, still bitter that she didn't chose CGNU.

"You're a professional at insulting people? That's not something to be proud of."

"Oh, can it, loser."

"You are such a jerk."

"Hey, the last thing we need is you wasting our time with your pitiful attempts at insults," he muttered. "Next time, how 'bout we set up and intervention for _you_ and make _you_ go to a freakin' psychologist and dump off 900 bucks a week so someidioc quack can listen to your whining for four hours every week so _we_ don't have to?"

"And after you're done finding a shrink for me," said What's Her Face, having now figured out her strategy, "you can tell Coach Z,Kris and Joy why you've been drinking soy sauce?"

"You stupid little Emo nerd!" shouted Strong Bad. He stormed out.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————

**October 1st, 2003**

**9:08 PM**

"I took a year off to be with you," said What's Her Face into the phone. "No, really, listen, Hom—no, of course not…"

Coach Z stepped into the room and said, "Um…uh…sorry to interrupt yer phone carl there, but uh, ya mind tellin' me how…"  
"How I knew Strong Bad was back on soy sauce? I caught him hiding bottles at the bottom of the garbage can. He knows you check the credit card receipts."  
Coach Z nodded awkwardly.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————

As the sound of a computerized car speeding down a street crashing into a drunk-driven semi filled the room, it was soon accompanied by the smashing of an Atari 2600 controller into a TV screen, but only after the sound of Strong Bad shouting, "Aw, you stupid game!"

Coach Z opened the door and saw that Strong Bad had just hurled one of his controllers through the now broken shards ofhis TV screen.

"Ooh, that's gonna cost ya," said Coach Z.

"Leave me alone!" muttered Strong Bad. "I'm playing Nighttime Driving Type Game!"

"Um…gee, Strong Bad, I, uh…where do you go at night?"

Strong Bad just glared at him. He then reached over and pulled the controller out of the TV.

"Er...uh...you're notthe one who toilet paper'd the McNabb house, are you?"

"Coach, I stopped rolling houses ever since I got charged by the cops!" said Strong Bad. "Is that why you came into my room? To blame me for things I didn't even do? Huh?"

"Look, I just…no, I just don't want you to do anything you'd regret..."

"Well, you should mind your own life!"

"Well, yer my friend, and I feel like I gotta look out for ya."

"Well, don't!"

"Okay, Strong Bad…I'll leave you alone now…"

Coach Z backed away and closed the door, just in time to hear Strong Bad mutter under his breath, "Friggin' poser…"

Coach Z looked down dejectedly and walked to his room.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————

Strong Bad shambled into the bathroom, pulled open the medicine cabinet behind the mirror, snatched a bottle of pills labeled "The Cheat, M.D." and, with a sullen face, swallowed a few tablets.

He shut the mirror and looked at his reflection. Something was strange about the mirror. He couldn't tell what.

He shrugged to himself and decided to ignore it, and told himself that it must be a side effect or something.

He cursed themedication under his breath.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————

**11:59 PM**

**October 1st, 2003**

Coach Z, who had been unable to sleep, pulled up the footrest in a recliner and flipped on the TV to watch a rerun of Caleb Rentpayer.

_"Caleb, did you put toothpaste in my cupcakes?" _

"I sure did!"

And for a moment, everything in the house was still.

And the clock clicked over to midnight.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————

**12:00 AM **

October 2nd, 2003

"Strong Bad…"

"Cehbeh…"

"Strong Bad…"

"Cehber…"

"Strong Bad?"

"Cyberspeh…"

"Strong Bad!"

"Cyberspeh…Cyber Spin…"

"Strong Bad, wake up!"

"Huh? Wha? Oh, yes, I _am_ cool, thanks for asking..." he mumbled.

"Strong Bad!" shouted the voice again. "Wake up!"

"I _am_ awake, moron!"

"Oh, right, right. Come down stairs, and then go outside, and follow my voice."

"Uuuh…I should follow a disembodied voice telling me to do something completley pointless even though it's no doubt a side effect of the medication? Sure. The walk'll do me good. Fine."

This was pretty uncharacteristic of Strong Bad, but it was really late, and he was really tired and couldn't think straight.

Strong Bad hopped out of bed and made his way downstairs.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————

He walked outside, not noticing that his steps hadn't made a single noise.

Strong Bad found himself standing outside, with nothing to do.

"Um…what exactly am I doin' here?"

"Follow me," said the disembodied voice.

"Er, yeah," muttered Strong Bad sarcastically. "And how am I meant to do that?"

"I'll sing for you," said the voice. "Follow the singing!"

"Please don't."

But it was too late.

"_It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all!"_

"AUGH!"

But for some reason, Strong Bad felt compelled to follow the voice, so he did, in spite of the annoying singing.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————

**1:14 AM **

October 2nd, 2003

The singing finally led Strong Bad to a golf course way on the other side of town (it was completely deserted at that time of night).

And when Strong Bad finally made his way to the 18th hole, he saw the person who had led him there.

There was a very weird-looking guy standing in front of him.

Well, he might have been.Strong Bad couldn'tsee what he looked like, becausehe was wearing a big creepy navy blue bunny suit.

"Who that crap are you, bunny-suit?" muttered Strong Bad.

"My name's Homestar Runner," said the guy in the bunny suit.

"Lonestar Funnel?"

"No, Homestar Runner!"

"OnStar Tunnel?"

"No, Homestar Runner! You know, like a baseball player!"

"Um…what?"

"Oh, I wrote it on a Post-It note."

The guy in the bunny suit held up a Post-It note.

_Hoamstar Ranner_

"Yeah that sucks," muttered Strong Bad quickly. "Anyways, why the heck did you bring me here?"

"Because…um…aw, man, I had it a second ago…"

The guy in the bunny suit held up another Post-It note. He read it for a seconds, and then said, "Oh, right, now I remember! Um…"

He put on a creepy reverberating ghost-like voice that entirely failed to be scary.

"28 daaaaaays…!" he exclaimed. "6 hooooooouuuuuurs…! 42 miiiiiiiiinuuuuutes…! 12 seeeeeeeecooooooonds…! That is when the woooooooorld will eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeend!"

He shut his eyes and added, "Pschew! Pchshew!"

Strong Bad stared at him blankly.

"That…was…supposed to…be…the lightning…" he murmured quietly.

"So, the world's gonna end in about a month?" said Strong Bad.

"Yup!" said the guy in the bunny suit.

"Why would it do that?"

"I'm actually not supposed to tell you," said the guy. "You have to figure that out by yourself."

"Right. Well, I'll give you a dollar if you tell me?"

"Really? Oh, wow, cool! Deal! Okay, okay, okay, the world will end because—no, I still can't tell you…sorry, man. I'll make it up later. Anyway, 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 12 seconds. Um…bye!"

Homestar Runner ran away. Strong Bad was too tired to chase after him.

"Okay," said Strong Bad. "I'll just…walk back to my house and slowly begin to doubt that what he said is true until by the time I reach my house I'll be completely convinced that he was either lying or wrong…"

Strong Bad turned around to do just that, but he suddenly yelled, "Oh, no! Nap attack!" and he fell asleep before any trace of doubt could enter his mind.

Author's Notes: It's a poem!

_Hope you think it's neat!  
Please do not delete!_


	2. Metal

Author's Notes: Yeah, I know, I should work on _Zaphod's Trial_—and trust me, I will—but this is fun to write, so I wanna keep going. Oh, and to that reviewer, I was one of the people who gave a plot summary for Donnie Darko on IMDb! Mine's the third one.

* * *

**October 2, 2003**

**1:17 AM**

What's Her Face stepped quietly into the house and closed the door.

The car of her boyfriend, the one who had just dropped her off at her house (the car was a '73 Gremlin AMC), turned the ignition on and, before driving away, gave a loud honk to the house, and then drove off down the street.

What's Her Face sighed a breath of relief that she had not woken up anyone else in the house (though she wrongly made the assumption that Strong Bad was there and that Coach Z was in bed), and closed the door softly.

Coach Z was, in fact, sleeping at the time, on the couch in front of the TV (which was still turned on, and tuned into _Caleb Rentpayer_.

"_You look like a fish, Tucksworth."_

"_Caleb, I need corrective lenses!"_

Just then, all the care What's Her Face had taken to close to enter the house quietly was put to waste when a much louder noise—or rather, several much louder noises—woke up everyone in the house.

What caused these loud noises, you will find out soon enough. But what I will tell you is that one of them was a very, very loud crash, and another one of them was about everything in the house on a shelf violently falling off.

**

* * *

October 2, 2003**

**10:04 AM**

Strong Bad later awoke to the sound of a golf cart driving up close to him.

For a minute, he didn't know why he head that sound, until he remembered he had fallen asleep on the golf course.

He lifted up his head and saw a man examining him with confusion. Another man, riding in the golf cart, looked over at the first man and said, "Who is it, Ed?"

"Um…no one, just my friend Z's roommate, Bubs."

Strong Bad looked around and squinted.

"Huh? Wha?" he murmured. "Wh…who are you? How dare you tresspass on my super fortress of small ponds with fountains and large wooden buildings with lots of windows that smell like club sandwiches? Uh—oh…right, I'm on the golf course."

"Not a very good place to sleep, eh, kid?" said the man named Bubs.

Strong Bad paused for a moment, distracted by what he saw written on a Post-It note he had just taken off his forehead.

_28:06:42:12_

"Yeah…um…sorry…uh…"

"Just try to stay off the course at night, okay?" said the man named Ed.

"Yeah, whatever…" murmured Strong Bad, hopping up and walking away quickly.

"Okay," said Bubs. "Let's bowl!"

"Let's golf."

"Fine, have it your way."

**

* * *

October 2, 2003**

**11:06 AM**

There was definitley something going on at Strong Bad's house.

There were several police cars, several news vans, a signle unmarked black car, a fire engine, a huge yellow crane, and dozens of firefighters, cops, reporters and men in suits running around his lawn.

"No way!" said Strong Bad. "Can it be true? The police have actually come to arrest me for being too cool?"

Strong Bad pushed his way past the crowd of interested public to the cop standing behind the large band yellow caution tape around his yard.

He ducked under the tape and tried to push past the cop, but the cop stopped him.

"Hey, no going past the tape unless you live here, pal," said the cop.

"Do you live here?" asked Strong Bad.

"Well, no, but—"

"Get out."

The cop looked down, ducked under the tape and walked over to one of the squad cars.

"That's what I thought," said Strong Bad.

He looked around for someone to ask what had happened, but he saw no one. That is, until he heard Coach Z's voice shout, "There he is!"

Strong Bad turned around to see Coach Z, So and So, What's Her Face and The Ugly One all standing together next to a police car.

Strong Bad walked over to them and said, "Um…it's pretty obvious what I'm going to say, but I'll say it anyway. What happened?"

"Um…jeese, how can I say this…" said Coach Z slowly.

"You just say it like this," said The Ugly One. "'That fell on your room.'"

"Oh, right!" said Coach Z. "That fell on your room."

Coach Z pointed up to the crane. Hanging off the large metal hook on the end of it, having just been pulled out of a huge hole in the roof right over Strong Bad's room, being hosed down by a fireman on the fire engine, was a huge, rusty, two-toniron jet engine turbine.

* * *

The man from the black car in the black suit pulled out his wallet and flipped open a badge and said, "My name is Bob, I'm with the FAA. Which one of you owns this house?" 

"We both do," explained Strong Bad, motioning to Coach Z.

"Well, which one of you bought the house?"

"Uh, that'd be me," said Coach Z.

"Man, I keep telling you, I could've paid for it!" said Strong Bad. "I just needed to get my Aztec gold out of my bank in Zurich!"

"I'll talk to you in the hat," said the FAA guy.

Coach Z shrugged and walked over to the black car with Bob. As they began talking, What's Her Face said to Strong Bad, "They have no idea where it came from."

After a minute, Coach Z returned to Strong Bad and the girls and said, "The Men in Black guy paid for us to stay at the Vacation Inn 'till they fix our house. We're gornna stay at a hotel."

"We're gonna sleep on those hills by the pond?" said Strong Bad increduly.

Coach Z frowned at him. "Come again?"

"Oh, sorry…nothing."

**

* * *

October 2, 2003**

**5:38 PM**

They were lucky enough to get a suite from the FAA. There were 5 beds. Strong Bad and the teen girls had their beds, and Coach Z took the desk by the TV as a bed (even though the couch was a Hide-A-Bed).

Strong Bad felt upset that they all knew more than he did.

"All right, so," said Strong Bad, slumped down on his bed, "let me see what happened here. A jet engine fell on my room."

"Yeah," said What's Her Face.

"Why did it fall off?"

"No one knows," said So and So.

"Who owned the plane it fell off of?"

"No one knows," said The Ugly One.

"How long until we can go back to our house?"

"No one knows," said What's Her Face.

"IGNORANCE!" shouted the teens in unison.

"What's the point of the FAA even taking this case if they don't know anything about it?"

"Well, someone had to pay for our hotel room."

"Yeah, but why'd it have to be these cheapskates? They didn't even pay for the N64 games! Every time I turn on the TV and it goes to the hotel menu channel, I'm haunted by that creepy recorded voice telling me to pay the extra $3 to play Donkey Kong! It gives me nightmares. And the jibblies."

"You could've been crushed by a two-ton jet engine, and you're having nightmares about Donkey Kong?" said So and So.

"Um…well…yeah," muttered Strong Bad. "I mean…you can never trust that guy…I mean, what's the deal with his name? Donkey Kong? He isn't even a donkey."

The bathroom door was closed, and there was a loud sound of sound of someone crashing into it from the other side. The door was slid open, and Coach Z ran out and quickly tripped and fell to the ground.

"They're outta moushwarsh!" he shrieked.


	3. The Poopsmith

Author's Notes: Sorry for the absence. I've been on vacation, to anyone who's reading this. And I've also been really bus(laz)y.

**

* * *

October 3, 2003**

**7:09 AM**

A corroded old Honda Escalade, not unfamiliar to the various sounds a car makes when it's in serious need of repair, pulled up to the stop sign across the street from the bus stop. Strong Bad and The Ugly One got out of the car, Coach Z said goodbye to the two of them, and he drove off in his car.

Already waiting at the bus stop was Strong Bad's friends Pom Pom and Homsar, along with The Ugly One's friend from Interpretive Dance Club, Meaghan, and Steve, the foreign exchange student from Potamia.

"Sup, my pallies?" said Strong Bad.

"Hey, Steve," said The Ugly One.

Steve remained silent, determined ever since he got to FCUSA to avoid making friends.

Meanwhile, Pom Pom said to Strong Bad, "Bubble bubble bubble bubble! Bubble bubble bubble bubble bubble bubble bubble bubble bubble! Bubble bubble bubble bubble bubble bubble."

Translated, as will all of Pom Pom's speech be, this meant, "Wrestle-man cheats death! I called you like a jillion times last night! But the calls never got through."

"We're at a hotel," said Strong Bad. "And my phone was, you know…"

"Destroyed, right."

"Hey, I heard you woke up on the golf course last night. Sleepwalkin' again?"

"I wouldn't tell you even if I was," said Strong Bad quietly.

"I'm a twirling blue elephant!" decreed Homsar.

"Yeah that sucks," muttered Pom Pom. "Cold One?"

He pulled out a Coldson Light can, which he could luckily fit in his jacket pocket due to it's new "bullet can" version, which was considerably smaller than the normal kind.

Just before he drank the Cold One, he said to The Ugly One, "What happens if you tell Z 'bout this, Ugg?"

"You'll use my pinebark collection in your woodburning kit," she said sadly.

"Dat's what I thought," said Strong Bad, and he downed the One.

"Coldson, Pierre?" Pom Pom offered to Steve.

Steve said nothing.

"Fine, be that way," muttered Pom Pom. "Go back to Franceland, Silent Jay."

"Lay off him, man," said Strong Bad.

**

* * *

October 3, 2003**

**8:04 AM**

The schoolbus finally screeched to a halt in front of Free Country School Thing, Strong Bad and his friends and fellow students poured out of the bus door and towards the entrance to the school.

The school was a buzz of activity around this point.

Among the students filling the school this morning were Strong Bad (who was very happy about the mild celebrity status he had recently received), Strong Mad (the school bully who was actually in no way related to Strong Bad, and who was at the moment bawling various exclamations and smashing in his locker door), Strong Sad (the new kid who was feeling midly disoriented), The Ugly One (who was outside in the school courtyard practicing her Interpretive Dance with the rest of the members of the club, which was named Dance Styles), and Steve (who was also in the courtyard, sitting alone against to the big bronze statue of the school mascot—a large bulldog of some sort—scribbling something in a book).

Among the staff at the school this morning were the King of Town (a creepy old man, and also the vice prinicpal, who was the teacher of Dance Styles), Bubs (a motivational speaker/self-help guru who had been invited to the school to give a lecture), The Umpire (the prinicpal of the school, who was introducing Bubs), Marzipan (the english teacher who was being introduced to Bubs), and Homeschool Winner (the science teacher, and best friend of Marzipan, who was also being introduced to Bubs).

I shall now break away from these long boring and hard to read descriptions to say that now is about the time when Strong Bad and numerous other students sat down in Marzipan's english class.

The class's current book George Orwell's _Nineteen Eighty Four_. They had just started it, and were supposed to have read the first chapter the night before. Marzipan had decided to read a passage from the first chapter to illustrate the feel of what the rest of the book would be like.

_"You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized._

"What was Orwell trying to communicate with this passage?" asked Marzipan. "Why did IngSoc use video surveillance of all the citizens 24/7?"

"Man, is it just me, or is Marzipan acting really weird today?" murmured Strong Bad to Pom Pom, who was sitting on the right side of him.

"Yes, Joanie," said Marzipan.

A girl sitting on the left of Strong Bad put her hand down and said, "They wanted to make sure that all of the citizens were safe from crime, so they put up security cameras everywhere to make sure criminals could be caught on tape. Like, security cameras at convienence stores."

"Joanie, if you had actually read the first chapter—at a whopping twelve pages, it probably would've kept you up all night—you would know that the government sets up constant video monitoring to make sure the citizens don't disagree with any of the government's insane rules."

The girl named Joanie looked down sadly.

"Strong Bad, you seemed particularly interested in the prospect of overthrowing the government, perhaps you can give us your oppinion from Winston's point of view?"

"Oh, yeah, right…well, Big Brother just kinda wants everyone to do what they want them to do…they're telling the public what they can and can't do, they wanna make sure the people aren't thinking maybe they shouldn't listen any more…so they put cameras everywhere to try to make sure everyone's scared so they think what the don't wanna think…wouldn't work on me, man."

There was a knock at the door. Everyone turned to look.

There was a new student at the door. A big round grey kid with nervous looking eyes and matted down white hair.

"Yes?" said Marzipan.

"Oh, no," murmured the kid. "I, um—my name's Strong Sad, I'm supposed to be in this class, I think…but I might be lost."

"Well, you look like you belong here."

"Um…where should I sit?"

"Sit next to the kid who looks the coolest," said Marzipan, in a very un-Marzipan-ish way.

Strong Sad slowly looked around the room, trying to pick out the student who looked the least like they would beat him up if they sat next to them. His eyes finally stopped on a short kid wearing a red mask and no shirt.

_Looks harmless enough_, thought Strong Sad. _I wonder if he'll be friends with me._

"Joanie, get up," said Marzipan, reading Strong Sad's face. Joanie stood up and went to a desk on the other side of the class. Strong Sad sat down next to Strong Bad. The classroom laughed.

Strong Bad looked over him for a moment and said, "Sup, four-finger?"

**

* * *

October 3, 2003 **

**6:07 PM**

"So," said Coach Z, in the Honda Escalade, driving Strong Bad home from…well, I don't know where they were going, school ended at 3:30. Well, anyway. …driving somewhere. "How wass cool?"

"Um, Coach, I think you mean 'was school.' You missplaced an 's'."

"Oh, yeah," said Coach Z.

"So, anyway, what's the latest with the jet engine fiasco?"

"Well, da FAA's still not sure where it came from. Somethin' about a serial number that got burnt off, I dunno…"

"Sounds pretty mysterious," said Strong Bad. "I wonder if they'll send in those Shoulder and Scull-facey guys."

"Yeah, speaking of which," said Coach Z, "they made me sign some forms…uh, I can't really talk about it…"

"You signed forms saying you wouldn't tell anyone that the government is clueless?"

"Yeah!"

"Well, you just told me, genius."

"Oh…" murmured Coach Z, unsure what to say. "Mouthwarsh?"

He took his hands off the wheel to hold out a bottle of Listerine.

"Um…Coach?"

"Yeah?"

"It's great that you're offering me poisonous b/w acidic dental-type liquids…"

"Great!"

"But maybe you can occupy your time driving your car with WATCHING THE FREAKIN' ROAD!"

Strong Bad leaped across the car and pushed the steering wheel to the side just before they ran into the Poopsmith.

Not much was known about the Poopsmith. He was a strange old man with very large lips, weird shaped eyes, and large orange gloves covered in gross dirt-coloured stains which was always clenching a large shovel. He lived by himself in a large run down shack-like house up on the hill. No one ever talked to him, but it was normal to see him standing in the middle of the road like now. He remained perfectly still as the car screeched past him.

Coach Z and Strong Bad hurried out of the car and rushed over to the Poopsmith.

"Oh, geeze…uh, sorry there, uh…Poopsy…I didn't see ya there…um…oh, crap, I think I ran over some broken glass! I'll be right back!"

Coach Z hurried over to the car and bent down to examine the tires.

Strong Bad turned to the Poopsmith.

The Poopsmith did what he normally did after standing in the middle of the street, he shambled over to his mailbox, which was marked _Smith_. He slowly opened it and peered inside. It was empty. It was always empty.

"No mail today," said Strong Bad, trying to sound comforting. "Don't worry, maybe tomorrow, man."

The Poopsmith turned to him and looked into his eyes.

Strong Bad felt strange standing next to the Poopsmith…as if they had something in common, something deep…a connection, that he didn't know about, but would become clear later.

The Poopsmith stared back at him with his huge black and white eyes.He sensed something too.

"Look, man, sorry 'bout Coach Z, he's a really big creep and a pretty big jerk sometimes…" he said akwardly.

The Poopsmith leaned forward to Strong Bad and whispered eight words that set into his skull like mud.

Strong Bad staggered backwards from the Poopsmith in confusion, and he slowly shambled up towards the car.

The Poopsmith turned back to his mailbox. He put the mailbox door back up, walked back up into his house, and closed the front door.

Coach Z looked over at Strong Bad from across the roof of the car.

"What'd he say?" asked Coach Z. Strong Bad said nothing. He just blinked. "What'd he say, Strong Bad?" asked Coach Z again. Strong Bad remained silent again.

* * *

Author's Notes: Read George Orwell's _Nineteen Eighty-Four_. Seriously, it's the best. 


	4. Therapy

**October 3, 2003**

**7:32 PM**

7:30 was the time for Strong Bad's therapy session, with one of his best friends, The Cheat, who had chosen to go to medical school instead of elemtary school like Strong Bad, Pom Pom and Homsar, because it finished quicker. He actually did really good in medical school, ended up with a Ph.D. in psycotherapy, and soon became a certified psycologist. He had, of course, agreed to step in to help Strong Bad after Strong Bad had his unfortunate incident. The Cheat being his shrink was the one thing about his treatment after the incident that he objected to the least.

The Cheat had managed to get the lease on a room at the local college, where Strong Bad and all of The Cheat's other patients met with him. Not much room for the sessions in The King of Town's grill.

After Strong Bad had gotten settled down on the couch, the session began.

"Meh, meh-meh meh meh meh meh meh-meh meh-meh-meh," said The Cheat, which, translated, meant, "Coach Z told me you've been skipping your medication."

"Well, if I can skip my medication and stay just like I was when I was taking it, I'm hoping it'll make him feel guilty for all of this…the medication, having to see you…no offence."

"S'alright," said The Cheat. "But, I have to tell you, Strong Bad, all of this isn't Coach Z's fault. Not in the least. You're going to have to accept that."

Strong Bad said nothing.

"Is there anything that's happened lately you'd like to tell me about?"

"I made a new friend," said Strong Bad quietly, stretching out his feet on the couch.

"Real or imaginary?" asked The Cheat.

"Imaginary," replied Strong Bad.

"Can you tell me about this friend?" asked The Cheat.

"His name's Homestar."

"Homestar? That's an odd name."

"Yeah…pretty much everything about him is odd…I'm not exactly sure if I like anything about him…"

"Why do you said he's your friend, then?"

"Well, he saved my life," said Strong Bad.

"How so?"

"Well, do you watch the news?"

"I don't have room for a television in the King of Town's grill."

"What about newspapers?"

"The postal service only counts the King of Town's castle, and everything on it, as one property, so they only deliver one paper, which the King usually eats before I can get it."

"Right, right…well, a jet engine fell on my house…it landed right on my room…I would've been crushed, but I was talking to Homestar on the golf course…he had led my there…he must've known the jet engine was coming."

The Cheat said nothing. He was reading Strong Bad's face, analyzing whether he was telling the truth.

"I wouldn't lie to you about something like this, man," said Strong Bad seriously.

"Homestar…told you to leave your bed and go to the golf course?"

"Well, he woke me up, andhe told he tofollow him, so I did."

"Follow him where? To the golf course?"

Strong Bad shook his head. The words Homestar had told him on the way to the golf course still echoed in his head.

"He told me to follow him into the future," said Strong Bad. He paused, then added, "He said the world was going to end."

Strong Bad turned over slightly on the couch, hiding the arm where the numbers were still written.

"Do you believe him?" asked The Cheat. "Do you believe the world is coming to an end?"

Strong Bad paused for a long time.

"No way," he said finally. "That's stupid."

**

* * *

October 4, 2003**

**2:10 AM**

There was nothing but silence…it was as if the sound of silence itself was reverberating off the walls…of the lockers…of the doors that led into the classrooms…all around the school…nothing but silence.

Until…a noise…it came so gradually, bit by bit, that even when it was at its loudest, thundering through the halls, it still sounded perfectly quiet.

It was the sound of a tidal wave, rushing and crashing through the halls, filling the school with water.

It was amazing.

Strong Bad awoke with a start.

He was on the sofa in front of the TV in his house. He had been dreaming about the tidal wave.

His eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. He was not alone in the room.

There was someone…something…standing in front of the window…silhouetted in the pale moonlight. The figure spoke to him.

"Yo, Strong Bad," said Homestar. "Yo."

Strong Bad squinted and leaned forward to get a better view. He leaned too far forward and fell off the couch.

"Homestar?" murmured Strong Bad tiredly.

"Yup! Cool dream, man. Flooding in the school and all…"

Strong Bad could now see Homestar was holding two cans of yella spray paint.

"Yeah, that'd be awesome," said Strong Bad with a grin. "I wish I could trash the school…"

"Go for it!" said Homestar. He thrust the cans of yella paint into Strong Bad's arms. "Here, you'll need these."

"Oh!" said Strong Bad.

"And, uh…good luck tonight," added Homestar. He winked and clicked his tongue, then turned around and rammed his shins into a coffee table.

"I'm thinking you're coming with me," said Strong Bad. "Children need parentral supervision."

**

* * *

2:31 AM**

It didn't take him long to gather the other supplies: he got the flashlight from his bedroom and the axe in the garage.

A few minutes' walk, Homestar and Strong Bad found themselves at Free Country School Thing.

The front door was locked.

"How are we gonna get in here?" asked Strong Bad.

"I dunno…pick the lock?" said Homestar.

Ever since Strong Bad had received a pair of fake handcuffs when he was 10, he had known how to pick a lock. All you needed was something long, thin, hard, that would fit in through the keyhole and maneuver up to the tumbler—there was always just one tumbler that, when tumbled, would open the lock…just one, always at the back. With the plastic handcuffs, he had always used a pen…this time, he would need something better.

"Ya wouldn't happen to have a screwdriver on ya, would…um…ya?" said Strong Bad.

"Sure! I got one right here!" Homestar replied, pulling a screwdriver from a pocket in his bunny suit.

"Nothing weird about that," murmured Strong Bad. He took the screwdriver and…um… screwdrove…it into the lock. Just like every lock he ever picked, he rooted around for a few seconds, waiting for that click of the the tumbler sliding off the latch.

_Click!_ The door swung open. Strong Bad heaved the axe over his shoulder with one boxing glove, clutched the can of paint in the other, and held the flashlight in his mouth. Him and Homestar walked in.

**

* * *

2:36 AM**

They were inside the school, in the basement. A large furnace and all kinda watery pipes dominated the room.

Strong Bad crept up to the main pipe. He gripped the axe with both gloves, convident in knowing that his gloves would leave no fingerprints, and any other evidence would be washed away by the tidal wave.

The axe came into contact with the pipe. The sound of metal slicing through metal filled the room.


	5. Yella Paint Put To Use

**October 4, 2001 **

7:32 PM

As Strong Bad, Pom Pom and Homsar (or, as they called themselves, Poms, Homs, and Stoms), downed some cold ones, except for Homsar, who just stood there like a weirdo, The Ugly One was reading a story called _The Last Miger_, a story about a magical tiger/mouse mix to Meaghan, but quietly, so as to not attract insults from Strong Bad.

"…and then the prince was led into the hall of mirrors, where laser rock shows were king of the castle," read The Ugly One.

"You really need to take a class or something," commented Meaghan.

Strong Bad snatched the looseleaf paper.

"_The Last Miger: A Story of Fiscal Earnings_ by The Ugly One," read Strong Bad, as him and Pom Pom laughed.

As Strong Bad and The Ugly One argued over whether Strong Bad had wrinkled the piece of paper in the snatching process, Pom Pom remarked, "Hey, it's 7:30. The bus is, like, twenty minutes late."

"Maybe Rex finally snapped and hijacked it?" suggested Strong Bad.

"You know, I think there's a rule that you get to go home at 7:45."

"There's no rule," muttered Strong Bad.

"Yes-huh! And even if there isn't—which there is—if we keep waiting, a guy in that 'white sedan' you always hear about might pull up and kidnap us."

"Then our parents could sue the schoolboard and get lots of money for us."

"And we could enjoy this money if we ever get rescued from the kidnapper."

"So, whether or not we got all of that money depends on the competence of the Free Country USA police force?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Okay, then it's settled, we go home if 7:45 is bus-less," said Strong Bad.

**7:45 PM**

The bus had not yet come. 

"Time to go!" said Pom Pom, checking the clock on his cell phone.

"Come to my house," said Strong Bad. "So and So's at work and What's Her Face's at the high school. Coach Z is no doubt lying unconscious in a dumpster somewhere in the outskirts of town, so my place'll be good for hours."

"All right!" said Pom Pom. "C'mon, Homs."

Strong Bad, Pom Pom and Homsar began walking off the sidewalk.

"Come on, maybe-girls," said Strong Bad to The Ugly One and Meaghan. "You can call Meaghan's mom when we get home."

As Meaghan and The Ugly One began walking with the others, Strong Bad said to Steve, "You should go home, man."

Steve just glared at him and remained perfectly still on the bus stop.

"Go get kidnapped, Teller," muttered Pom Pom.

Just then, two ten-year-old girls that Strong Bad had seen twice or thrice around school ran up to the bus stop.

"My mom said schools cancelled," said one of the girls, "'cos the school's flooded."

"Good time!" cheered Pom Pom.

A look of horror crept over Strong Bad's face.

At the same moment, the Umpire, prinicpal of the school, had just arrived on campus and was standing with the school's janitor, Claude.

A torrent of water gushed past their feet.

"My school is ruined…when will this stop?" asked the Umpire.

"Well, there's no exact way of knowing, monsieur," said Claude. "But it will stop eventually…but until then, there's no way of…um…doing…that thing…"

"Knowing?"

"Uh…good enough. There's no way of _knowing_ how long it'll go."

"Yeah. Thanks for nothing. Anyway…is there any other damage done, Cloud?"

"Claude."

"Right, right, whatever. Well, is there?"

"Cull-AW-duh."

"Yeah. Is there?"

"Like, if a bear scratched someone with its claw, the person would be _claw'd_. Think that."

"I know! I know! Is there any more damage?"

"Huh? Oh, yes, of course. Yeah, there's something else. It's uh…pretty big."

And so, Claude led the Umpire out to the courtyard behind the school, where stood the big ol' statue of the school's bulldog mascot, it's solid bronze self gleaming in the sunlight. But there was something else gleaming in the sunlight, too.

An axe. Embedded, rammed, into the head of the bulldog.

"Mearciful heavens," said The Umpire. "That thing's solid bronze, how could an axe get stuck into it? That's impossible!"

"Seeing is believing," said Claude.

"Well, I must be blind, 'cause this is unbelievable."

"What's worse, that's not all."

"Huh?"

"Look down."

The Umpire looked down, for a moment. Then, he took a step back to see what he was looking at more clearly.

In front of the bulldog with the axe in his head was a huge message, spraypainted in the ground in yella paint. The Umpire could just stare in shock at what he was reading. In mildly untidy, non-specific, all-capital handwriting was this:

THEY MADE ME DO IT.


	6. School's Cancelled

Author's Notes: (running as fast as I can) Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry—(trips on my face, gets up, keeps running)—sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry!

**

* * *

October 4, 2003**

**7:51 AM**

Strong Bad scooped up a rock from the sidewalk.

"What're you doing, man?" asked Pom Pom.

"There's a school bus coming down the street," said Strong Bad. "It's one from our school. I just gotta time it right…"

The bus rounded a curb, about to pass by the five students on their way to Strong Bad's house.

Strong Bad hurled the rock just as the bus passed by. The rock hit the windshield of the bus, but due to timing, not head on—from the side, so as it skidded across the glass until it fell onto the other side of the street. The driver was so frightened that he floored the break. Luckily, most of the kids got through the violent forward-flinging and back-of-seat-immediately-in-front-into-slamming with only minor bruises and aches.

The bus was now stopped. Strong Bad called to the students in the bus, "Hey! School's closed! You can go home!"

The bus riders all cheered, and those who could still move opened up the emergency exit door and ran out.

The bus driver, who had just pulled his face from the windshield, turned to Strong Bad and gaped incredually.

"Thussakool?" he murmured.

"Yeah, it's cancelled."

"Whuh?"

"It's flooded. Er…I mean, I think it is. I don't really know anything about it."

**

* * *

7:53 AM**

Strong Sad's eyes remained fixedly staring at the ground. The sidewalk, more specifically. He was trying to walk as fast as he could without resorting to speedwalking, which he was convinced was an exercise that could permissibly be performed only by old ladies in malls wearing windbreakers.

He was making pretty good time, until a huge crack appeared in the sidewalk. Strong Sad lost his footing and tripped in the crevice and landed face-third on the sidewalk. Luckily, he didn't have any teeth to be knocked out, so the only pain he felt in his face was pain he felt immediately, as opposed to the few seconds of numbness one has in their gums after losing teeth, before their gums begin to bleed.

The crevice had been caused by Strong Mad, smashing his fists into the aforementioned walk (be it of the side-ed persuasion, or otherwise).

"GIVE ME THAT BOOK!" bawled Strong Mad. He reached over and picked up one of Strong Sad's textbooks, which were lying strewn about the area after Strong Sad's tumble. He stuck it in his mouth and launched his jaw against the dust jacket. He bit a huge chunk out of the book. He chewed it for a few seconds, deciding what to do with it, then swallowed it. "I DON'T LIKE YOU!" roared Strong Mad.

Just then, Strong Bad turned a corner and saw Strong Mad.

"Hey, that gray kid from school with the European name, being terrifized by Strong Mad!" said Strong Bad. "I'll takes care of that."

He picked up a rock off the sidewalk and hurled it at a tree just to the right of Strong Mad, who was just about to tackle a recently-stood-up Strong Sad. The rock bounced off the tree and sacked Strong Mad in the face.

"STUPID TREE!" bawled Strong Mad. He dived-bombed the large elm, but ended up being knocked out, his head having collided with that yellow metal band stuck around the tree to kill bugs.

"Hey! Strong Sad, from English!" said Strong Bad. "Don't bother going to the bus stop. School's cancelled." He put on a mock-English accent. "Tis the daftest thing—I can't for the life of me recall the quothment of the bloke who relayed the tail of the academic establishment that…um…got all flooded. Anyways, your bus wouldn't happen to be the one with the big skid mark across the windshield, would it?"

"Um…I don't remember it like that…but it's the one with a big tree branch stuck in one of the windows. I can't really remember what the guy who told me about what happened said, but I remember he told me to 'believe you me', or, in my tense, 'believe me him', that you really shouldn't stick your arm out the window on a bus."

"Well, vegetation in the windows or not, your bus isn't coming. The bus driver's kinda uncapacitated right now. Anyway, my therapist tells me I should branch out to other people, so I'm gonna start with you. I'll walk you home. Where do you live?"

"Specifically, I live in the basement of 347 Greenview Avenue. My bedroom's right below the bathroom, which has all sortsa leaky pipes, so I always get covered in water while I'm trying to sleep; which may be the reason I dream of myself drowning every night."

"Cool…cool…I know where Greenpiece is, I'll take you home. I'll make sure none of Gaw Mad's goons jump you on the way home."

"You're not going to charge me for protection like the mobsters do on that TV show that makes one episode every two and a half years but only lasts about six minutes, are you?"

"No promises, but I'm leaning towards no. Oh, and check your backpack…that guy Strong Mad always hangs around, Silent Rip, might've stolen something while the big guy was eating your psychics book."

"Physics, not psychics."

"Gasundheit."

"You're not even using that right."

**

* * *

7:56 AM**

"…so you see, everyone on Earth _could_ be descended from the populace of the Golgafrincham middlemen from the Ark B," finished Strong Bad.

"Oh…I didn't see where you were going with that," said Strong Sad. "And now that you're done, I can see it went nowhere."

"Well…why did you come to a dump like Fusussa?"

"What? Foosball-soccer?"

"Fusussa. It's what we call Free Country, USA…you know, shortened to F.C.U.S.A. We pronounce it phonetically, like _Fusussa_."

"Oh…well, we had to move 'cause of the Witness Relocation Program…my brother got hopped up on—well, the police think it was teriyaki sauce—and, well, he put my pet rabbit in the blender."

"He did WHAT?"

"Don't worry…he tried putting a fork in it once a few years ago but it got wedged between one of the blades and the inside of the glass, and the whole metal part was catapulted out of the blender and out the window. So…there were no blades in it when he put the rabbit in it and turned it on, so no harm done; but he was still considered dangerous by the police, so we were relocated…I got to change my name and all. I thought Strong Sad sounded kind of cool…you know, like 'tough, but sensitive'…I was hoping people would think I was like that, but…it didn't work. Anyway, we needed a really out-of-the-way little town that no one really knew existed…so we came to…what was it? Fi-koosa?"

"New kids always take a while to get it, don't beat yourself up. _Fuss-USS-aah_. Say it with a flourish."

"Fu…huu…gwa…gads?"

"No, but I'm still glad to hear you say what you just say nevertheless."

"Well, wherever I am, I'm glad to be away from my brother and his annoying emotional deficiencies."

"Hey, I have those too," said Strong Bad. "I still can't figure out if that's something to be proud of or not…anyway…I'm kind of prone to Ranacvi"(Strong Bad pronounced it _RAN-ack-vi_)"or Random Acts of Violence. Mostly stuff while I'm sleepwalking…at first, it was just small stuff, like finding a pickaxe in my garage and chopping up some of my neighbors' flowerbeds…until…I don't know how it happened, I musta watched too many 80's sci-fi movies, but that night, I sleepwalked right towards my computer where I did some kind of messed-up black hat stuff…I ended up hacking on to the on-board GPS on my mom's SUV and somehow started the ignition and crashed it into a tree without even driving it…when I saw it next morning, it was pretty cool looking, I must admit…but anyway, I'm not aloud to use any kinda computer 'till I'm 30, same for any touch-tone phones, remote controls or even digital watches…I can't drive 'till I'm 35, neither. I was taken to Juvie for six months, then I got a house with my friend Coach Z. Could be worse."

"You manage to crash an SUV into a tree by hacking into its on-board computer _in your sleep_," said Strong Sad, "and I can't even read computer slang well enough to realize that I'm at the wrong meeting place for a meeting with my online dating service contact before 8 hours have elapsed?"

"Yeah, well, don't take any acting lessons, 'cause trust me, you do not want to be me. Did you know I have to sit at the back of the bus every time I ride it because anywhere closer would be too close to the electronic headlight control console? I can't even leave the bus through the front door, I have to get off through the emergency exit at the back so the only electronics I'm around are the lights on the back of the bus. Oh, and if you ever notice that my grades are low in pretty much every subject 'cept English, it's 'cause I can't use a computer to research homework. Man, the only reason I had an Atari 3600 in my room was 'cause Coach Z smuggled it in! My life sucks, bad! And all because…because of my sleepwalking…"

Strong Bad had turned away from Strong Sad.

"Uh…I have a…clothes…in the washer…I gotta go…"

Strong Bad ran off down the street, his head held low.

He then ran into a stop sign.

"Stupid hexagon…" Strong Sad heard Strong Bad mutter as he ran down the street. "I'll give you a piece of my—"

He ran into another stop sign.

"That's it, I'm taking the city bus home from now on!" shouted Strong Bad.


	7. Hypnotosizing

Author's Notes: Erm...I got nothing to say. Except, thanks for reading my story so far. Now, let's see what wonderment is in store for us today. That's not toilet-related.

**

* * *

October 6, 2003**

**7:34 PM**

"I'm gonna try something a little different today," said The Cheat. "I'm not exactly sure it this'll work, but who knows…it's professionally called 'power of suggestion', but you might know it better as—"

"Hypnosis," finished Strong Bad.

"Wha?"

"I'm studying that kinda stuff…conscious thought, stuff like that. I'm trying to get rid of those sleepwalk hallucinations."

"Quit bitin' my style. Anyway…we're going to try some aversion therapy. This should only take a few tries. I've brought some sleeping pills, and when you take them, I'm going to clap my hands twice, so you'll associate falling asleep with me clapping twice. Got it?"

"Aren't I not allowed to take any other medication?"

"Good. Here, drink this."

"Whatever you say," said Strong Bad. He then added, _"O'Brien_..._"_ under his breath.

The Cheat handed Strong Bad a glass of water and a piece of plastic in the shape of a shot glass with two red pills in it. He downed the water and drank the pills. His eyelids suddenly felt like they were being pricked by pins. He tried to shut his eyes as quickly as he could, but he was so tired he could barely move them. The last thing he sensed before he fell asleep was the sound of The Cheat clapping twice.

When he woke up, The Cheat was shaking him back and forth on the couch. He glanced up.

"Huh? Wha?"

"Let's see if this worked," said The Cheat. He clapped twice. Pins on the eyelids, he was asleep. He was woken up again.

"Great! It worked!" said The Cheat. "IT'S ALIVE!"

"What?"

"Oh, sorry, man," said The Cheat. "Take this. It's chewable, so you don't need water."

Another plastic shot glass, this time with a yellow pill in it.

"It's a pep pill. You'll take it, and I'll clap, and you'll fall asleep, but youll've taken the pep pill, so you'll still be conscious. Then, you'll be hypnotized."

"Cool," said Strong Bad. "Clap like an audience at a classical music concert, man!"

S to the B downed the pill, and the little yellow guy clapped twice.

Strong Bad was awake and asleep at the same time. He could say anything. He wasn't afraid. The Cheat was a good guy. He trusted him.

"Now…tell me about your day."

"I made a new friend today."

"Real or imaginary?"

"Real."

"Would you like to tell me about this friend?"

"He's this guy called Strong Sad."

"What's he like?"

"He's kind of a wiener, but he's a pretty cool guy. Like, he's all smart, and he doesn't think I'm weird like everyone else."

"You're not weird," said The Cheat. "How good of friends are you with him?"

"Well…I don't really know? I mean, we just met today in English class…I guess he's my friend 'cause I met him in English, that's my favourite class."

"Why is it your favourite class?"

"Well, we're studying _Nineteen Eighty-Four_, and it really speaks to me. It's like the book, I'm the only one who really sees the truth about things."

"What truth is that?"

Strong Bad paused.

"I don't know," he said.

"How do you see the truth that others don't?"

"Homestar Runner."

"The man in the bunny suit?"

"That's him."

"I don't think you should keep associating with Homestar."

"I won't."

Strong Bad made a note to see if he was telling the truth.

**

* * *

October 7, 2003**

**9:06 AM**

He began calling out the names of various students in the class.

"Aaron Armitage…Cherita Chen…Strong Sad…"

"Man, is this Literary English Class or Kids Whose First And Last Names End With The Same Letter Class?" murmured Strong Bad.

"Strong Bad," called the cop.

Strong Bad glanced up from his desk.

"Yeah?"

"It's your turn."

"Oh, right…whado'I do again?"

"Just go to the board and write the phrase."

"What's the phrase again?"

"'They made me do it.'"

"They did?"

"No, that's the phrase to write. Weren't you paying attention?"

"Yeah, I just forgot."

Strong Bad pushed up from his desk and quickly to the chalkboard. He picked up a piece of chalk and did that thing where you kind of spin the thing in your hand around between your fingers, then he neatly scribbled in a semi-bold Ahnberg Hand narrow the phrase, _They Made Me Do It_. He tried not to think about how he would write it.

"Try to pay a little more attention next time," said Marzipan friendlily.

"You got it," said Strong Bad, trying to sound friendly, but coming off as kind of mad for having to do this stupid exercise. He sat down in his chair and began chatting it up with Strong Sad.

The cop turned to his clipboard. He put a question mark next to Strong Bad's name.

"Question mark?" said the second cop quietly, glancing over the first cop's shoulder. "What's that mean?"

"It means that one, I don't know if that kid's writing matches the graffiti by the statue, and two, I don't know what kinda name is 'Strong Bad'."

"Yeah, I know. It's like…European."

**

* * *

1:04 PM**

The scratchy sound, the lousy picture, the dull colour, the intolerably repetitive shots of fields and trees and the sun...it was a self-help infomercial.

"I realized that I had become a victim of scaredness," said an overweight lady on the tape, looking as sincere as possible. "I was feeding my pain with food. And food is something you should never feed yourself. You should feed yourself with scaredness. Oh, I mean—you should feed yourself with un-scaredness."

The lady paused and turned off-screen.

"Yes, of course 'scardeness' is a word! It's the adjective of 'scared'! I—what? Well, of course I know the actual word was fear! But I was told just to read what it says on that cue card, and 'fear' is all smudged, so I thought, like, even though my script said 'fear', it was supposed to say, like, 'scaredness' or something, but there wasn't enough time to write it on the cue card, so he just smudged it out or someth—"

The sound of a hand angrily hitting a malfunctioning camera to get it to turn of stopped right about now. The image changed to Bubs, that big orange guy with the blue face.

Meanwhile, the King of Town, the class' teacher, began smiling even more.

"Enough with the telescreen propaganda, already," muttered Strong Bad.

"Strong Bad!" said the KOT. "That's enough with 1987!"

"Eighty _four_."

"Watch the video!"

Strong Bad glanced back to Bubs.

"Seriously, peolebody! I'm Bubs! And all across the prairies and mountains, people are joining together for Bubs' _Out Of Here With All That Fear_ program!"

"_Ooh! Oooh!"_ said Homestar Runner's voice from out of nowhere. _"Watch this part! This is my favourite part!"_

Strong Bad glanced up. No one else had heard his voice.

**

* * *

4:33 PM**

"You take one down, you pass it around..."

Strong Bad and Homsar just sat there.

"I _said_," said Pom Pom, "you take one down, _you pass it around_..."

"Oh, right," said Strong Bad. "Sorry 'bout that."

He reached on top of an old fence that him and Homsar were lying against. He took down a cold one from a row of them on top of the fence and tossed it to Pom Pom. Poms drank it down, aimed his pistol at another fence a few meters away and blam, fired at one of the cans lined up on the fence.

"...one-less-emp-ty-cold-one-can-on-the-fence!" sang Pom Pom.

Strong Bad downed a cold one for himself.

"Aaah! That's good carbonated yet unspecifically alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverage!" he said.

"I'm a class ring on '94!" declared Homsar.

"You know, I hear they're coming out with raspberry cold ones."

"Cool! Red's my favourite colour," said Strong Bad. "As I gathered, from my mask and boots."

"I like yellow more," said Pom Pom. "As judging from my torso."

"What kinda yellow? Like…dandy-lion yellow or high-lighter yellow?"

"More like egg yolk yellow."

"Speaking of eggs, which came first? The chicken, or—insert that little squiggly line you see in dictionaries here."

"Duh. The egg. All chickens come from eggs."

"Well, maybe some kind of bird evolved into a chicken after it was hatched."

"You moron! Organisms don't evolve while they're alive."

"Then how do you evolve?"

"I dunno, before they're born, when they're in an egg or something."

"That's a stupid one."

"You got a better one, bro?"

"Well, what about, like, people go blind after they're born? That's evolving."

"No, that's losing a sense. That's more like de-volving."

"Things can't de-volve! That's stupid!"

"Course they can devolve! If your leg falls off or something, that's devolving."

"Okay, one, losing a limb is disease, not -volution. And two, e- or de- volving means the entire species changes too."

"Species don't evolve all at once! Moron!"

"How do you know?"

"How do you not know?"

"This is pointless."

"I'm a twirling sundog!" shouted Homsar.

"Shut up," said Pom Pom and Strong Bad at the same time.

Strong Bad glanced up at the sound of squealing tires.

The three of them looked down the hill at the street, where the King of Town was getting out of his car (which might've convinced someone that it was actually from the turn-of-the-century and not just made to look that way if not for the fact that it was neon blue) to walk the Poopsmith back to his old derelict house after he had just been standing silently in the road.

"Seriously, Poopsmith," said the King. "Quit standing in the road. You're blocking my Model T!"

The Poopsmith wandered to the side of the road. The King drove off, annoyed and very old.

"Hey, that hooplith is all jungajoom!" said Homsar.

"Yeah, how old is the Poopsmith, anyways?" asked Pom Pom.

"Legend has it, she's like a thousand."

"What legend?"

"You know. Local kind."

"Right."

"Oh look, he's checking his mailbox!"

"Is there mail in his mailbox?"

The Poopsmith opened up the slot with a big orange gloved hand.

"Ooooh! No cigar!" said Pom Pom.

The Poopsmith turned around, then around once more back to his mailbox.

"Oh! There's still a chance!" said Strong Bad.

No mail in the mailbox. The Poopsmith closed the slot.

"I'm a-free-add not," said Pom Pom with a grin. He did that thing where he closes his eyes and moves down his head to laugh.

"Poor guy," said Strong Bad. "I'd like to meet him."

"I represent the candy cane tribune!" said Homsar.

"Course y'are, Homs," said Pom Pom. "Course y'are."


	8. Liquid

Author's Notes: Sorry about the delay. Oh, and sorry, but in order to keep with the story of the original movie, I'm gonna have to do some serious promotion of the aforementioned book _Nineteen-Eighty Four_. Seriously, you should read it. You can Google in and get it for free in, like, ten seconds.

**

* * *

October 7, 2003  
****  
6:59 PM**

Strong Bad looked up from the TV and turned around to face the two construction workers standing next to one of the walls in his basement. His wall had no drywall on it, so it was just a layer of plastic on top of that pink insulation stuff.

"Hey, hard-hats," called Strong Bad. "You guys almost finished with my wall?"

The workers glanced up from their red metal lunchboxes.

"Um...hag on," said one of them. Sic.

He turned around, held up a felt-tip marker, and scribbled 'Finished' on the layer of plastic.

"Now we are," said the worker.

"Cool," said Strong Bad.

**

* * *

7:00**

Strong Bad pulled open his medicine cabinet b/w mirror to take his pills, like he did every day at 7. He stopped to read the label of his plastic orange canister.

"The Cheat, MD," read Strong Bad. "Hey...I thought The Cheat said he was a PhD..."

He shrugged and stuffed a red-and-white pill in his mouth. He drank a glass of water and swallowed the pill. The water went down the wrong way, and he began coughing furiously. After a few seconds, he pounded on his lungs and looked up again. Something seemed to be wrong with his eyes.

He could see his reflection, but something was different. The fabric of his mask was changing from red, getting brighter, turning to white. Turninginto felt.His eyes were getting darker and smaller. They were turning from green to black. They were changing shape, getting thinner and rounder. His grey horns were getting higher, on top of his head, turning white. His mouth was getting longer, stretching out more, stretching out his face into an underbite. His skin was turning white, turning into fabric. His boots were turning blue. His arms were fading away. He was getting taller, thinner. He was changing shape and colour. His body had turned into the shape of someone wearing a white bunny suit.

Strong Bad's reflection had turned into Homestar Runner.

"Bwaaah!" shrieked Strong Bad. "Mirror phantasm!"

"Hey, man!" said Homestar with a smile. "Sup, man? Destroy any schools lately?"

"Whazzuwuzza?" murmured Strong Bad intelligibly.

"Don't worry, Stong Brad. You got away with it!"

"Why'd you make me flood the school and axe the dog?"

"Beca-ause!" said Homestar in that three-syllable stretched out version of 'because'.

"That's not a reason, that's just a word."

"Oh, really? Is it? Didn't notice. But check this out! Touch the mirror."

"What?"

"Just, like, tap it with your glove or something."

Strong Bad reached up and touched the mirror. He was suddenly surprised—the glass didn't stay still. A ripple spread through it, as if it was liquid.

"Isn't that totally coolsome?" said Homestar happily. "Oh, by the way, I'm kinda thirsty."

Homestar picked up a glass off the sink (or at least made a glass hover in front of him as if he were holding it) and stuck it in the liquid mirror. He scooped up a cupful as if it were water. Just before he drank the glass of mirrorwater, it hardened back into glass. So when Homestar tried pouring the cup into his mouth, the water-in-a-cup-shaped glass slid out of the cup, fell hard onto his face, hit the ground and shattered.

"That sure hits the spot!" said Homestar.

"How did you—?"

"What? Turn the glass into water?"

"Well, actually, I was going to say, 'How did you pick up that cup without arms,' but sure, that works too."

"Well, I can do anything!" said Homestar.

"Except have arms."

"Right. And so can you!"

"Not have arms?"

"No! Do anything!"

"Except grow arms."

"Yeah, sorry man. You can't have any arms."

"Aw...too bad," said Strong Bad. "I've always wanted to have arms. Hey, wait a second..."

"See ya!" said Homestar, and he disappeared. The mirror's reflection turned back into Strong Bad.

**

* * *

7:17 PM**

EMERGENCY EATING

EETING

MEATING

MEET-N' GREET

MEETNING

KEETLING

MEELING

PEI-KING

LEETSPEAKE

HALLOWEEN

SUPRASPEKE

MÉLEE

DEEDLE DEE

MEETING

↑ THAT'S THE ONE ↑

You'd be surprised how many words you can fit on those little black signs with the white tile letters and the lines going across that you slid the letters across on that they use at convention centers and stuff. Well, actually, you wouldn't. They had to get multiple signs to be filled up by all the misspellings of 'meeting.' People in Free Country, USA weren't that smart, being it in the field of spelling or in the field of taking misspelled signs down instead of putting new ones up.

Anyway, inside the school, the meeting was in full swing. Which wasn't saying much.

The cramped school library was filled with nothing but picture books for little kids and reference books which students weren't allowed to check and and/or read. The smelled like papier-mâché newspaper covered in paste, due to the school's recent and most definitley failed attempt at remodeling the library.

Four tables had been positioned to form a kind of square that all the parents and teachers sat around (except; one: with a species like the type of vaguely-but-not-quite-human hominids that made up the populace of Free Country USA, you can never really tell if people have parents; and two: the teachers did such a bad job teaching that they barely qualified as teachers). Coach Z was one of the quote-unquote-parents at the meeting. Keywords "quote-unquote", since he was still convinced he was a mom and was allowed to say 'gar-bazje' like that.

A snack table with three-week-old-crab cakes and those little triple-decker chocolate squares with the layer of beige crumb-stuff in the middle was to the side of the square.

The King of Town was milling aro—is 'milling' a word? It doesn't sound like one. Anyway, the King of Town was milling around the room, distributing copies of a book to each P and T in the A. The book was white, with an orange spine. He distributed it cover-down, so no one could see which one it was. No one cared, so no one turned it over.

As a copy of the book was passed to English teacher Marzipan, shewhispered to the King, "What do you think you're doing?"

"Hey," said the King quietly, "there are some things that our students shouldn't be exposed to!"

"You just don't like it 'cause it has big words in it. Like _oligarchy_. And _four_."

"My reasons are my own!" said the King defensively.

Anyways, after the copies were distributed, the King sat down in his seat next to Principal The Umpire.

"As you all know," said The Umpire, "Free Country USA School Thing, or whatever it's called, in co-operation with the volunteer police force—"

"It's not volunteering if you don't get paid for it," muttered a quote unquote parent, who happened to be the only member of the town's VPF, in a very surly voice.

"Um...yes, it is," said the Umpire.

"It is?" said the parent. "Oh, well then, nevermind."

"Anyway," said the Umpire, "this school is trying it's very to, uh, you know...solve the case...or...crime...whichever. Several suspects of the case are students of our own school."

"So, you're admitting that your school breeds criminals?" said a parent.

"Um...no," said the Umpire with a frown. "It's...um...it's the dang rap music and all! What with the hip-hopping and beat-bopping...it's all getting out of hand."

"This meeting is about protecting our children, man!" said the King of Town. "Not throwing them in any of one manner of correctional faculties!"

"And what's more protective than a jail cell?" said the Umpire. "Nothing can get in or out. Keyword being _in_!"

"Step off, State Building," said the King. "I got stuff ter say!"

"King, could you wait just a second?" said the Umpire.

"I'll wait on your fate!" said the King. "I'm a parent as well as a teacher!"

"You're a parent?" said the Umpire.

"Well, the idea's pretty much been scrapped by now, but I used to kind of be! And, since you're the principal, and I'm both a parent and a teacher, I represent two letters of PTA, and you only repremand zero!"

"Be that as it may—"

"My turn now!" shouted the King, and he pushed the Umpire out of the way and took stage. "I am here to talk to you about this!"

The King held up his copy of the book. It was _Nineteen Eighty-Four_.

"I hold in my copy a hand of Georgewell Greene's _The Ninety-Eighty Four_," announced the King. "Throughout the book, claims are made by various peeps on TV that they did various nefarious deeds! Such as poisoning the water supply, which is a bad vandalism-type thing involving water! Just like the vandalism thing that this school suffered with the flooding! This book is clearly to blame."

"Those crimes never even happened," said Marzipan. "The confessions were just from brainwashing."

"Brainwashington like the propagation in _Fourteen-Eight_ itself?" said the King dramatically.

"This meeting wasn't called to discuss tomes and/or lore, King," said the Umpire. "It was to talk allsabout the investigation to the PTA."

"I _am_ the Senate!" said the King of Town. "I mean—I _am_ the PTA! And I say this book should be removed!"

"Does the Par-tee-orr ban books?" said Coach Z.

"Well, we should!" said the King. "This is not good!"

"King, you didn't actually read the book," said Marzipan, "and just read a synopsis of it on the internet, didn't you?"

"Never you mind," said the King. "Down with this one!"

He held up _Nineteen Eighty-Four_. Some people in the audience said, "Yay!"

**

* * *

7:18 PM**

"And now I'm back!" said Homestar Runner, appearing in the mirror again, bunny suit and all.

"Raaah!" shrieked Strong Bad. "What's the deal, man? Why'd you make me flood the school down?"

"I already told you! I can't have told you," said Homestar. "Which means, I can't have told you in the future. Which means, in the future, I can't have previously told you. Which means, I can't be telling you in the present. Which is to say, I can't tell you man."

"Why not?"

"Cause they thinks it'd mess up things," said Homestar.

"What thing? Why thinks it'd mess up thing?"

"Um...you know. The guys."

"Which ones?"

"From where I'm from."

"Are you from around here?"

"I'm from Lathan."

"Massachusetts?"

"Lane."

"Seriously, man! Where you at? Er, from?"

"Dost yo believe in traveling through time, man?" asked Homestar.

"Hey, Fightman," said a voice coming to the door. It was What's Her Face.

"Maaah!" cried Strong Bad. "Man, I am doing a lot of shrieking today."

"Who're you talking to?" muttered What's Her Face. "You're screaming's distrupting my college-type essay...tuition...aptitude...um...student loan...test. Remember? I'm going to be going to college? I'm going to be taking English class, and I'm going to study writing stuff like plots. And this essay I'm writing is the device I will use to study plots."

"So, one might say," said Strong Bad, "that you're going to college is a 'plot device', if you will?"

"If I will, but I won't," said What's Her Face. "Anyway, whatw're you doing?"

"Oh, well I was..." said Strong Bad, and then he turned to the mirror to see that he was alone. The mirror's relfection was just that of him and What's Her Face.

"...I was singing," said Strong Bad. "Yeah, you know...tunes and chords and harmonies and melonades...singing."

"Whatever you say, Bootfoot," said What's Her Face, and she walked away.

"Yeah? Well, at least," cameback Strong Bad, "I don't have a buncha blue looseleaf lines all over me!"

He turned back to the mirror.

"You are such a jerk-face," muttered Strong Bad to Homestar, whether he was there or not.

**

* * *

7:19 PM**

"Look, Marzipan, alls I'm saying is that this book is fuel for gruel!" said the King. "And by 'gruel,' I mean 'vandalism.'"

"That's an outrage!" insisted Marzipan. "That book is an insight on human nature!"

"It's nothing but people describing their acts of vandalism on television for all to hear," retaliated the King. "The book even ends with the guy coming to love the malevolent force that brings him to do these atrocities!"

"Those confessions weren't true," continued Marzipan. "He only loved his oppresors because he's hypnotized!"

"Hypnotism aside, unencouraging stimuli— is that how you say it? Stimuli? —have no business in our school system!"

"Hey, Kingy," said Coach Z. "Do you even know who this Georgeson Orwelles guy is?"

"Well, I think we've all heard of _War of the Worlds_," said the King.

"This meetin's boring," said Coach Z. "I only even came here for da free crab-carks."

Coach Z hopped up from his plastic orange chair, grabbed a handful of little yellowish-brownish-orangish things and went on his way. Marzipan followed him as he left the library, but they left from separate doors and didn't speak to each other.

Of course, Coach Z didn't notice that Marzipan wasn't walking with him, and gave a long, heart-felt speech to her about the question of whether people who weren't really friends could ever become more than friends without ever having really been friends or having known each other at all too good. When he was out on the sidewalk and about to get into his car, he concluded the speech with a request to her to think about the theory he had proposed, then he said his goodbyes and noticed that she wasn't there, nor had she been at all any of that time.


	9. Calvanism Hobbes

**October 10, 2003**

**1:12 PM**

"Left! Left! Right! Stab stab stab!"

"Thank, you lost contragulaton," read the horribly-translated machine.

Strong Bad and Strong Sad were at the arcade.

"Aw, this game sucks anyway," said Strong Bad. "So, Rudolph the Grey, what brings you to a dump like here?"

"The arcade? Well, you suggested we go here, and I—"

"No, I meant Free Country. It's a total dump. I live here, what's your excuse?"

"Well, my dad got in a fight with my mom about the last slice of pizza, and it kind of snowballed...anyway, I ended up eating the piece, but my dad tried to kidnap our house. This isn't exactly a crime, but he ran away so quickly the police assumed he must've been a criminal. They haven't found him yet, but we had to go through Witness Protection. I chose the name Strong Sad 'cause I thought people would see me as tough yet sensitive, you know? It didn't work."

"No, I can see that," said Strong Bad. "Who were you before you got a new you?"

"I can't really tell you...I think they'd have to shoot you if I told you."

"So, you're an unperson."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"You're kind of weird, you know?"

"Kay."

"You're like this weird tough-guy with boxing gloves, but you read all the time."

"Well, everyone in history's faced every problem someone could possibly faced, twice. And at least one of those times, they wrote down how they solved it. Read a lot, and you never don't know what to do in any situation."

"Whoa...that's literary things that."

"Yup."

"Hey, when you sleepwalk, what happens? Do you remember your dreams and stuff?"

"Sometimes, you remember your dreams. Sometimes, you don't remember your dreams too good, but you remember _having_ your dreams. When I wake up after sleepwalking, I remember remembering having those dreams. But I don't remember the actual dreams. That would be weird."

"What do you wake up to?"

"The sound of my own screams. No, wait, that's what a goth kid does..."

"No, I meant _where_ do you wake up?"

"Usually that hill down by the pond."

"Really?"

"No. I woke up there once, though."

"Do you like it there?"

"No. There's too much water. I'm more of a _fire_ or _wind_ guy."

"Hey, what if you're supposed to go there?"

"Why? For, like, a science project or something?"

"No, I mean, like, metaphysically? Maybe someone's guiding you. Some force beyond our control."

"Okay, one—no force is beyond my control, except the force emmited from myself that causes all other forces to become inside my control. I don't have that. And two—you've been reading _way_ too much Calvanism Hobbes stuff. All that Final Destination stuff."

"_Pre­_-destination. And it might actually be true, you know. Your sleepwalking might be leading you to something bigger than either of us combined."

There was a dramatic pause.

"Nothing's bigger than you, Washington Fatcat."

"Hey!"

**

* * *

October 13, 2003**

**8:07 AM**

It was Poetry Day in Marzipan's class. Everyone had written poems and now was the day to present them. It was Strong Bad's turn, and he was reading his poem. His was a particularly creepy poem.

A crash, a flash, a bang

A huge light in the sky

No longer does it hang

The plane that should fly

Way up high in the sky

It comes to the ground

As the lightning bolt strikes

The plane, gravity's found

Not then, not that night

Will the plane reach its course

The storm is high in the sky

As parts wash up in the shores

As the lightning flashes

And the thunder rumbles

Homestar and his catches

Save them without fumbles

And though the plane will crash

And time is lost within a flash

I will be there to help him

Because I am Strong Bad

The class stared at him, wondering whether to laugh or run away screaming.

"Wow, that was very creative. I'm impressed, Strong Bad," said Marzipan. "Who's Homestar?"

"He's a guy with no arms in a bunny suit," said Strong Bad.

Strong Sad and Pom Pom laughed.

"Oh, man, that...hehe...the best, man," called Pom Pom.

"Maybe this bunny could help me plant my carrots," added Strong Sad jokingly. "Oh, wait, he doesn't have any arms! Hahahaha!"

"What?" said Strong Bad with a grin. "It's true!"

**

* * *

1:05 PM**

"..._and that's why I'm totally coolsome! Now press _stop_ and do that exercise like it's the last one you've got!"_

The King of Town pressed the _stop_ button on the VCR, stopping Bubs' video.

"Now then, y'all!" said the King.

"You're not cool so stop trying," said Strong Bad.

"Yes, well...be that as it may," said Strong Bad. "Look over here, it's a line with words!"

The King pointed to a diagram he had written on the board. It was a long line with 'fear' written on one side of it, and 'love' written on the other side. There was a line in the middle, seperating the lines into the two sides of both words.

"Fear is cool!" said the King. "Love is not—wait...love is cool! Fear is not cool. Now, let's review. What's cool?"

"Fear is cool love is not wait love is cool," repeated the students, not taking the King's pauses as new sentences.

"No," said the King. "Love is fear! I mean—fear is love! Not cool. Fear is not cool. Love is cool."

"All those greeting cards say love's warm, not cool," said Strong Sad.

"Well, the greeting cards are wrong," said the King.

"Greeting cards are wrong?" said Strong Bad. "Then what's the point of Mother's and Father's respective days? I don't know what to think!"

"Fine! Greeting cards are right," said the King in annoyance, "and love is warm _and_ cool."

"Oh, I see now," said Strong Sad.

"Anyways," said the King, "if you look on your desk, you'll find what's card a Character Called. On it is written a single situation, and you each have to come up here, read the situation, say which emotion it is and why, and write an X on the ap-rap-rit side. Ready? Go! You there, new kid, Peir. Come up here."

The King pointed to Pierre, who got up from his desk, came up to the chalkboard, and read, "Marco is going to have an important test but he hasn't studied so he decides to cheat. Uh...it's fear, cause—because...he's afraid he's going to fail the test, so he cheats."

Pierre drew an X on the 'fear' side, and then he went back to his desk.

"Next!" said the King. "You there...wrestling chap."

"You should learn your students' names, you know," said Strong Bad, getting up from his desk and walking to the board.

He began reading, "Polo finds a wallet full of money and a drivers license he takes the money but gives back the license. Oh wait, I mean he takes the license but keeps the money. I mean—he gives back the license but keeps the license. I mean money. I think it's love, because Polo loves having money, so he keeps the money."

"Um, I don't think that's it, Strong Bad," said the King with a frown.

"Well then I don't get it," said Strong Bad.

"What's not to get? Just decide if it's fear or love."

"I can't."

"But you must."

"This scenario has nothing to do with fear or love. This guy doesn't love anything, and he doesn't fear anything. He just wants money. That's more like greed than fear or love."

"Greed isn't on the lifeline."

"But—life's not that simple. People don't love or are afraid of _everything_. There's some other stuff to take into account."

"I don't think you understand the assignment."

"No, I do, but this can't be answered."

"Look, I am _not_ impressed if you've just been doing this to get me to give you the answer! And if that really is the case...well, it worked. The answer is fear."

"But what's he afraid of?"

"That's your job to say."

"But I can't!"

"Then you'll get a zero for the class."

"Fine. That's just great. You know why? I'll tell you why, Mr. of Town!"

**

* * *

2:09 PM **

"Thank you for coming, Coach," said the Umpire. "I'm sorry we had to interrupt you at practice, but you know how Strong Bad gets."

"I sure do, Ump," said Coach Z. "I sure do."

Strong Bad, Coach Z, and the Umpire were in the principal's office. What's Her Face had come along too, just for fun. The Umpire was sitting in a comfortable leather chair with arms. Coach Z and Strong Bad were sitting in uncomfortable and very itchy wooden chairs that had arms, but they were made out of wood and were very thin, so they hurt your elbows if you put your arms on them.

"Now...Strong Bad, I must say," said the Umpire (presumably, he must have), "this isn't the first time you've been in a situation like this."

Strong Bad just sat still, staring back.

"Your lowest marks are in health class. Why do you think that is?"

"What's healthy?"

"What?"

"What's healthy about it? All we do is watch that movie with that guy Bubs."

"I've met Bubs. I know him very well. He seems to think that learning to overcome fear is very important. Are you scared, Strong Bad?"

"No."

"Well...tell me again, what exactly you said to Mr. of Town?"

Strong Bad glanced down. He said nothing.

After a pause, an old, whiny voice said, "I'll tell you what he said! He said-a my moustache was lame!"

The King was standing just off to the side.

"Ha!" shrieked What's Her Face.

**

* * *

2:12 **

Out in the office waiting room/teacher's lounge, the King of Town and Coach Z were conversing. What's Her Face was sitting on one of the secretary's desks nearby.

"I'm really sorry, Kingy...ever since that engine crashed into our house..."

"Yes, yes, we all know a jet engine fell on your friend's room. Let it go!"

"Well, he's just been acting different, ya know? He's not himself."

"Look, Coach, I'm telling you this because both my niece, Carmella, and that girl you rent out one of the rooms in your house to, Joy—"

"Actually, I think she prefers her nickname, The Ugly One."

"In some capacity, she does. Anyway, they're both on my interpretive dance team—"

What's Her Face interjected by saying, "It's called 'interpretive dance,' because you have to interpret how anyone could call a mess of what looks like a poor imitation of seizure spams 'dance.'"

"Quite," said the King. "Anyway, Coach, I know The Ugly One very well. And from what I can see—well, and now there's Strong Bad acting out...I just don't want them to be under the wrong influence, know'm sayin'?"

"Yer sayin' I'm a bad arnfluence?"

"Well, no, not as such—"

"Come on, What's Her Face, Strong Bad, we're outta here. Wait, where's Strong Bad?"

**

* * *

2:13 **

Strong Bad had left about a minute earlier, after he had been told he could leave, while Coach Z and the Umpire were talking.

He was walking down the sidewalk to his house when he walked by a window that had been left ajar to let in the air. He could hear a newscast from inside. He stopped for a second to listen.

"..._the mildly unseasonable warm front drifting in eastward_._ Uh, unfortunately, there's not much warm air out here, but there's expected to be a sharp drop in the wind level, mostly in the lower rural areas of the county_. _The forecast for tomorrow is around 57 degrees with a fourteen percent chance of rain, and we'll have your full seven-day forecast tonight at 8_. _Back to you, Tom_."

"_Thanks, Zach_. _Anyway, a new set of town penal codes have been approved to cut down on traffic code violations_._ Special sensors implanted in the road at every crosswalk and street light will monitor any vehicles that pass the junction when the traffic light didn't signal for them to go_._ Violators of the rule, as monitored by cameras situated next to the light, will be eligible for fines of up to $20_..."

Strong Bad wanted to keep listen, but he could see down the street about six cars coming down the street towards a nearby crosswalk. He ran over and pressed the crossing button. The yellow light above lit up and began beeping. The drivers of the cars had heard about the new law, and were forced to stop, as Strong Bad stood on the sidewalk, doing nothing.

"Hey, move it, pal!" shouted one of the drivers from his car.

"Why don't you make me, fatso?" called Strong Bad mockingly.

"Oh, you are so dead!" shouted the driver. He got out of his car and began hurrying over to Strong Bad, only to cross the crosswalk line, set of the sensor, and have a large flash of a nearby camera momentarily blind him.

"What?" shouted the driver to the camera feebly. "No! I didn't cross the line! I'm not in my car!"

"No, you're not," said a policeman walking up on the sidewalk. "And standing in the middle of the street and holding up traffic when the light says it's not your turn is a punishable offence."

"What?"

"That'll be $20."

"But—it was that guy in the wrestling mask..."

The driver turned. Strong Bad had already started to run away. He could barely talk, he was laughing so much. "Yeah! Thought criminal! Thought criminal! Take him away, Thought Police! He's one of Goldstein's forces!"

"Come on, man, don't got all day," said the cop.

"But...wrestleman..."

"Yes, yes, wrestleman. 20 dollars."

**

* * *

2:14 **

What's Her Face was talking on the phone in the hallway outside the office. A secretary approached her.

"So then my roommate tells his teacher that his moustache is stupid, and he gets suspended. Totalitarian, I know..."

"Excuse me, miss?"

"Yeah?"

"It's Coach Z, that friend of yours."

"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say 'friend'..."

"He seems to have gone unconscious."

"Oh, really? That's just a mouthwash attack. Happens to him all the time, he'll be fine."

"Well, you're probably right, we still need to call an ambulance. Regulation."

"Ambulances are for lose-ons. And besides, I'm already on the phone."

"Shouldn't you have a cell phone, like all teenagers?"

"The stores that sell cell phones always seem to close just as I'm about to go get one. Kind of strange, really."

"Right. Well, is that a long distance call?"

"Is Vietnam long distance?"

"You're wasting the school's phone bill."

"It's an important call."

"Really?"

"Yeah, it is, so, you know, go away. So anyway, totally...yeah, so now Coach Z's buying him all this new stuff after he read a bunch of phycological books...he has no idea what he's doing."

"Yeah, I'm back now. I just checked. A call to a place like Vietnam would cost the school about $47 per second."

"Well, that's great, but I don't care. I'm not calling Vietnam."

"Oh...well, you said you were."

"Did I? Anyway...I know, he got like a new bed and everything...I wish a jet engine'd fall on _my_ room..."

**

* * *

6:52 **

"Well, Coach, from what I've seen of Strong Bad," said So and So, "he's the type of guy who should be punished when he does stuff wrong. Remember that time he went to jail after he burnt that house down?"

"Well, he was sleepwalking then," said Coach Z.

"More like sleeparsoning," said So and So.

They were all back at the house. Coach Z and So and So (that's two people, the first being Coach Z, the second being So and So; not three people, one named Coach Z, two named So, such as 'Coach Z, So, and So,' as it were).

"I say you should ground him," said the one and only So and So.

"I say I should get him a moped," said Coach Z.

A third person walked into the room.

"...yeah...I know, totally...okay, now that Coach Z guy's just said he gets a moped! I know, it's crazy..."

"Jennifer, what are you doing?" said So and So.

"Can't talk. Phone. Yeah, so anyway..."

That secretary from the school came up and said, "Sorry I had to come to your house, guys, but your friend here kind of took the phone with her when she left the school."

Coach Z paused and looked over where the long coil of plastic that came from the phone in What's Her Face's hand led to.

"Frankly, I didn't know that phone wire could stretch a mile and a half," said Coach Z, "but I guess I was mistarken."

* * *

Up in Strong Bad's room, Strong Bad was pencilling the finishing touches on a sketch of Homestar Runner in his fluffy pink bunny suit. 

"28 Days Later...Rocky VI...Level 42...Ocean's Twelve..."

Strong Bad managed to remember the time until Homestar had said the world would end through tedious cultural references, mostly anacronistic ones.

He didn't know how the world would end. But he'd do anything he could to find out what he would face. And he would be ready.

He didn't know what the storm Homestar kept cryptically mentioning was. But when that storm came, he'll have watched the Weather Channel. And he'll have remembered to brought an umbrella.

Metaphorically.

**

* * *

October 14, 2003 **

**3:26**

The last class of the day, physics, taught by a guy named Homeschool Winner, had just ended. The kids had all put their chairs up on their desks and had gone off to their lockers. Except Strong Bad. He stayed behind. He wasn't in trouble, but he had some stuff to say.

Strong Bad, with whom the teachers in the school were all on a first-name basis, said, "Homeschool?"

"Strong Bad?" imitated Homeschool jokingly.

"You know a lot about physics, right?"

"Yeah, but don't tell anyone."

"I got a question."

"Shoot."

"You would've ever heard of, like, time travel, would you?"

"Ah, chaos physics. My old foe. Yes, I've heard of it."

"Could it, like, exist?"

"Some say no, some say yes. I say it could, maybe."

Homeschool pulled open a drawer in his desk and took out a well-thumbed paperback book. On the cover was a small black ball of light in some kind of brown shell.

"This is Stephen Hawking's newest book on quantum mechanics," said Hoemschool. "It's not exactly new, but it's the most recent. You should read it some time."

"Just try and stop me," said Strong Bad.

"Anyway," continued Homeschool, "most scientific time travel theories centre around wormholes. They're are a kind of trans-dimensional portal that you can go through."

"Yeah, I know about these...if you go through one, you can travel to a different place and a different time, right?"

"Theoretically. But wormholes that physicists focus on are usually Einstein-Rosen Bridges, or ERBs. These are manmade portals created by what's usually just called a vessel."

"So...what, are these, like, spaceships or something?"

"Well, you can probably work out a diagram in your head. You have your portal, you have your vessel, most likely a spacecraft of some kind."

"Like a DeLorean."

"Now, now, let's not violate copyright."

* * *

Meanwhile, outside, that kid Pierre was in the courtyard with the bulldog, standing next to the physics classroom window, listening intently.

* * *

"All you need is something made out of metal."

"Why?"

"There have been stories for thousands of years about metal objects travelling through time, like the ancient myth of the soldier who was impaled by a falling spear that he was just about to build."

"Or the engine of a jet that hadn't started its flight?"

Homeschool smiled and laughed.

"Could be," he said. "Look, I have something that might interest you...it's another book, written by someone who used to teach science here. He wanted to have the job I have now, physics, but they wouldn't let him. During his stay, he wrote this."

Homeschool picked up another book off his desk, an old dark red one that looked faux leatherbound.

After Strong Bad took the book, Homeschool led him out into the hallway to a kind of bulletin board with a bunch of old photos of classes through the years. Homeschool pointed out a specific one, on old photo that looked to be taken just around the time when people started switching from black and white cameras to colour ones.

Strong Bad looked at the figure in the picture pointed out. He looked familiar, but he needed to check the student index at the bottom of the picture for the name.

"Okay, let's just see here...and it's—wha?"

Strong Bad turned around in confusion, as if doubting what he was seeing. Homeschool smiled and nodded.

Strong Bad turned back to the photo. He looked at the index again. The person in the photo, the one who had written the book he had been given, was third from the left in the second row. The index for the second row read as this:

_2ND ROW (L-R): MARCUS THOMPSON, NATHAN ABERNATHY, THE POOPSMITH, JOANNA LUCAS, PETER BLAIR, CHRISTINE STEVENS, ROBERT LEWIS, JAQUELINE NOLES _

* * *

Author's Notes: Um...you know, guys, reviews aren't locked for this story. You can review it if you want...kind of strange how there's three whole chapters that don't have any reviews...just saying. 


	10. Fun With Predestination

Author's Notes: Sorry about my absence. I was on spring break. Woooo. 

**

* * *

October 14, 2003**

**6:05 PM**

Strong Bad held up the book.

"It's called _Time Travel For the Hopelessly Lame_," he explained. "This is a very old book, and I can't let anything happen to it. No one's gettin' their mitts on it."

"Except you, Gaw Bah," reminded What's Her Face.

Strong Bad examined his boxing glove.

"Er...yes...well...indeed...except me."

"Yunnow," said Coach Z, "I once knew a guy from Mississiper that had a time machine. He used to go up and down and—"

"Coach, for the sake of civilization as we know it," said Strong Bad, "ya gotta cut it out with the ramblings about grody creeps who disowned you at a young age."

"Hey, that was because of political disagreements!"

"_What politics_? Free Country is barely in the USA as it is! The city hall is the swimming pool that dried up because we couldn't afford a filter. Or a roof."

"Yeah, but Mr. Sipper didn't know that, now did he?"

"Yeah. You keep on thinking I'd have some way of knowing that."

"Uh...you were saying something about the book?"

"Indeed I was, So and So. Guess who wrote it."

"Bill O'Reilly?"

"Uh...no."

"Charlie Rose?"

"No."

"Larry Sonkooper?"

"Geese, has everyone around me turned into a genius lately? None of those people! It's the Poopsmith, alright?"

"Ooh, I don't like him," said the Ugly One. "He's creepy—he has shoulders."

"The Poopsmith," said Coach Z. "Isn't that Bubs' cousin?"

"No, you're thinking of the Blacksmith," said Strong Bad. "Come on, man! You know, the guy you almost ran over last week?"

"Oh, yeah! That guy! How is he?"

"Reclusive, mysterious, and elbow-deep in whatsit."

"That sounds like him."

"I heard on the pipevine all the kids try burglarizing his shack," said So and So.

"Yeah, cuz you just know he's got the big borcks!" said Coach Z. "He used ta have all kindsa fancy jewels. Kids usta rob him all the time. Boy, let me tell you, he took care o' them, if ya know what I mean!"

"No, we don't."

"Oh...you don't? Well, he installed twenty locks and latches on every door and window in his house and became a total recluse. Truly a hero!"

"Who can blame him?" said Strong Bad. "This town is a dump. Not counting the science lab I rent out every Saturday, our town's university is an empty fridge box."

Coach Z wiped a tear from his eye. "Semper fi!"

**

* * *

October 16, 2003**

**7:31 PM**

"So, Guh Bah, about this Phonecar guy."

"Uh, I think it's Homestar, actually."

"Whatev. How much times have you seen him?"

"Four. _For now_..."

"Can anyone else see your imaginary friend?" asked The Cheat.

"No, no one can see Greg," replied Strong Bad. "But Homestar is a different matter. Only I can see that guy."

"So he's invisible to others?"

"No, he does that early nineties fantasy-comedy movie thing where he disappears right when someone comes into the room."

"So...you're the only one who can see him, communicate with him, or sense him?"

"He's a people person."

"Why do you think he only appears to you?"

"Dunno. They just tune out of the regular signal and come in on me. Luckily, I cover my rabbit ears with tinfoil."

"They? More than one? Bet Homestar's in a cult."

"Well, I don't know if he's by himself. All I can tell is that with that stupid costume, he's definitely not got a girlfriend. You know, that guy Strong Sad says he's a sign. Guiding me towards—"

"Suicide."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"So anyway, about this sign. I think it's on a post, while Strong Sad's going for a billboard stance—"

"A sign...but whom from?"

"_Who_ from."

"Huh?"

"_Who_ from. Interrogative, not subjective."

"Did you just correct my grammar...?" said The Cheat. He then added, "You know, not in song?"

"Yeah, I couldn't think of a tune. Sounds weirder, I know."

"So anyway, about Homestar and his infatuation with bunny suits—"

"The Poopsmith!"

"What?"

"Sorry, just changing the subject. He wants he to see the Poopsmith."

"Uh..."

"I have a book. He gave me one."

"The Poopsmith?"

"No, I haven't talked to him yet."

"Homestar?"

"It's my physics teacher."

"Homestar's your physics teacher? I thought you said no one can see him."

"Yeah, no one can see Homestar, but—"

"He doesn't sound like a very good teacher."

"He's not my teacher!"

"You don't have a physics teacher?"

"I do have a physics teacher! Homeschool."

"You're homeschooled? Is Coach Z your teacher?"

"No, Homeschool is his _name_."

"Coach Z's name is Homeschool?"

"No, no, no! I do go to school, I'm not homeschooled, my physics teacher is named Homeschool, no one can see Homestar, and Homestar wants me to talk to the Poopsmith, who wrote a book that the physics teacher at my school named Homeschool gave to me!"

"Okay, I understand every part," said The Cheat, "except the stuff that you said."

"Okay...let's see...a _book_ is one of those things," said Strong Bad, pointing to a nearby bookshelf.

"A book is a shelf?"

"No, books are the things _in_ the shelf."

"The shelf is hollow?"

"Look, Homeschool gave me a book about time travel. That the Poopsmith wrote. And Homestar asked me if I believed in time travel. I think.Well, he kind of mixed Old English with rapper slang, but I got the jist of it. That can't be a coincidence."

"Neither can this!" said The Cheat, hurling his cup of gummy bears out the window and smacking the King of Town in the head just as he walked by.

"The other day, the Poopsmith said the creepiest of creeps to me," said Strong Bad. "He said _enola seid htrae no gniht gnivil yreve_."

"Uh...you had your brain set on backwards again, buddy. I think you mean _every living thing on earth dies alone_."

"They do? No wonder family members end their visit to terminal patients five minutes before they flatline!"

"Yeah, it's weird like that."

"It reminds me of my old dog, Minutiae Allotment. She crawled under the fridge right before she died."

"To be alone."

"What? No, to eat the crumbs from the toaster. But that alone thing would be cool."

"Are you alone, Strong Bad?"

"No, you're right here."

"I mean in your life."

"No, I know Strong Sad, and Coach Z, and the squad of teen girls, and—"

"Obviously, you don't get my meaning."

"_You're_ a meaning."

**

* * *

7:49 PM **

"What is that?" shouted Coach Z. "He just ran a fifth in the down!"

"I hope he gets home before the shooter gets a card," said that Ed guy from chapter two.

"Well, the bases are fielded in the box."

"What the kind of game is this?" muttered Strong Bad.

* * *

Over in the kitchen, The Ugly One was saying, "That Mista Bubs is so dreamy! I can't believe he hasn't sold a hog to Farmer McGuggit and done been hitched to his daughter Mary-Lou!" 

"Not the hillbilly phase again!" said So and So.

* * *

"Go for the hole! Go for the hole!" shouted Ed. 

"Second down! Open the bases!" shouted Coach Z.

"Give him a path to center! Take the first down!" shouted Ed.

"He's on the right! Cover him, he's going for the net!" shouted Coach Z.

Strong Bad groaned the groan that one groans when one feels like one is having a battery dropped on one's head every three seconds.

"_Now, you see_," said the commentator on TV, "_what he did was at the beginning of the game, he wasn't doing very good, but then now he's improved_. _That means he had what we in the business call an 'improvement.' It's kind of a technical term, but you can find it in most glossaries_."

"This is so boring!" cried Strong Bad.

He glanced over at Coach Z.

Something was wrong.

Something was floating in the air in front of the Coach.

It was like a thin stick of watery gel, hovering right in front of Coach Z, stretching out a few feet forward.

"What in the crap...?"

The spear of gel began stretching out, and curving to the side on a corner, to the right.

Coach Z stood up and turned to the right.

The spear continued stretching out, all the way to the minifridge at the end of the room.

Coach Z walked up to the fridge and took out two cold ones.

"Hey, Eddy! Cold one?"

"No thanks, there, Z," said Ed, as his own spear stretched out to a bag of nachos a few feet away from the coach. "But I will—"

Strong Bad tossed the nachos to Ed on the couch.

"Hey, how'd you know that?" said Ed.

"Coach," said Strong Bad, as Coach Z sat on the couch, "it's not a good idea to open that closet. A big duffel bag always falls on your head."

Coach Z frowned, having not started to follow his spear's new path yet.

"And you!" said Strong Bad as The Ugly One and her spear drifted into the room. "You're going to—"

He paused to watch the path of the teen girl's spear. It headed towards a wall. He waited for it to turn. It didn't.

The Ugly One walked into a nearby wall.

"Er..."

Coach Z's spear led out in front of him again, towards a door next to the TV. As Coach got up to go to the door, Strong Bad jumped in front of Coach Z's spear path and said, "Hey, Coach! Walk into this wall why don't you?"

"No, I think I'll stick with doors there, Sub," said Coach Z.

As the spear hit Strong Bad, it quickly diverted to the side to avoid him. Coach Z followed the path and sharply turned to the side, walking into the wall.

"Oh, man! Who knew predestination could be so funny?" laughed Strong Bad. "Whoa, what the..."

He could now see his own spear had begun tracing a path through the room, down the hall. He paused for a few seconds to watch it. Then, it stopped, turned around, morphed into the shape of a hand, and smacked Strong Bad on the head. He quickly hurried after the trail.

It eventually led him into Coach Z's room.

He pushed open the door, and watched as the spear led him to the closet.

He pulled open the closet.

The spear stopped short and moved down to an old Freshley's shoebox on the carpet.

Strong Bad pulled open the box.

Inside was a television remote control.

He picked it up. It was unusually heavy. He noticed something felt wrong.

He turned over the remote. There were no batteries. And the battery cover was missing. And so were the two battery socket springs. The remote control looked immediately useless.

He pocketed the remote.

**

* * *

October 18, 2003 **

**9:08 AM**

"Now class, today is normally the day," said Marzipan, "when we would examine the latest passage from _Nineteen Eighty-Four_, but thanks to some poor wording and a lot of bandwagon-jumping, anyone caught with a copy of the book as of 3:30 today will be shot on the shot, or suspended. While I find this annoyingly unfair, we were at least able to get the King of Town to reconsider his book-burning policy."

The King of Town was then heard to say as he walked past the classroom door, "Stupid school board...I'll burn what I feel like burning..."

The students slowly shuffled up to deposit their copies of the book on Marzipan's desk.

Strong Bad, unnoticed, pulled off his copy's dustcover and slipped it over a similarly sized O. Henry book, giving the fake at the desk and slipping the real one into his binder.

"But you shouldn't worry," said Marzipan. "Someone has already left a stash of several dozen paperback copies at that abandoned concession stand by the field.

"From now on, we'll be reading another classic tale of rebellion, _Watership Down_."

She began passing around copies of the Richard Adam novel.

When Pom Pom saw the rabbit on the cover, he laughed, turning to Strong Bad and saying, "Hey, it's Homestar!"

Strong Bad glared at him.

"Oh, uh, I mean...um...hey, it's Homest—oh, right."

**

* * *

12:32 PM **

Strong Bad walked along the sidewalk towards the pizza place over at Skatetown, USA, passing what he called the Graffiti Wall. He looked over his tags from the past, like the large _JOB_ from when he tried to teach Coach Z proper English, the large _THE_ from when he tried to teach Homsar English, the large _ANY LETTER, WORD OR PHRASE _from when he tried to teach Pom Pom speech.

"Lookin' good, wall," he said. He then looked over and saw an irate Strong Mad next to him.

"LIAR LIAR! PANTS WITH A WIRE!" shouted Strong Mad.

"Pants on a what?"

"YOU SAID I FLOODED THE PLACE WITH THE PEOPLE!"

"The school? I said no such thing!"

"THAT'S NOT THE WORD ON THE PIPEVINE!"

"Well, what're you worried about? You didn't do it."

"HOW WOULD YOU KNOW THAT! IT MUST HAVE BEEN YOU!"

Strong Mad picked up Strong Bad and hurled him across the street.

"_AaaaaaaaaaaaaIcanseemyhooooooooouseohnowaitIcan'tbutIwishIcouldthat'dbecooooooool!"_

**2:31 PM**

Strong Bad sighed deeply as he took his seat in physics class.

"Made it..." he murmured.

The bell rang.

"Class dismissed!" announced Homeschool.

"What the...?"

"Oh, geese, did you get beat up?" asked Strong Sad.

"What? No! Of course not! Every part of that question is wrong. Except what you said."

"Come again?"

"Nothing."

"Remember class," added Homeschool, "tomorrow will be our meeting for the All-Wide Science Fair. So you'd better have a six thousand word essay on the intention, equipment, hypothesis, and semantics of your project on my desk by 9 AM."

**

* * *

4:15 **

"Uh, yeah, uh...I'll...uh...have, uh, one, uh, fruit smoothie."

"Real or artificial?"

"Real," said Strong Sad.

"Oh, lah-dee-dah," mimicked Strong Bad.

"Change comes to 68 cents."

The guy handed Strong Sad 67 cents.

"Uh, you only gave me 67 cents."

"_What_?" shouted the guy. "_Sorry, sunny, I'm terribly deaf in both ears_."

"Fine, forget it."

Strong Sad and Strong Bad left the ice cream stand and continued down the street.

"Hey, are you afraid of anything?"

"Only one thing—velvetine paintings of goblins, especially gremlins. I have to carry a pitcher of water whenever I go into a gallery."

"Are you afraid of the dark?"

"No. Darkness fear is for nerds and their derivatives."

"Well, babies cry because they're scared of the dark."

"Among other unmentionable reasons."

"Maybe that's because they don't know any better, and they think their life might be dark forever."

"Stupid babies."

"No, don't you see? There has to be some way of replacing those memories with better things other than just black."

"What? Like...gray?"

"No! Things like a tropical sunset or some big hill or something! Then they wouldn't be scared. If we work on this, we could be famous!"

"Of course...we _say_ this is what our invention does, and then when parents believe us, we'll make millions, but by the time they realize what's happened, we'll be lying on a beach in sunny Mexico!"

"W-what?"

"Oh, sorry. Wrong plan."

"Maybe this could be our science project?"

"Well, I dunno...it might get stolen."

"By who?"

"Trust me, man, there are spies everywhere."

"Oh, come on, that's just—is that a camera?"

Strong Sad glanced up and noticed a large CCTV camera routed into a nearby tree. A distorted microphone voice said, "No. Go back to your conversation. May I suggest you discuss the engine that fell on the masked one's room?"

"Hey, the FAA's spying on us!" realized Strong Bad.

The voice, now quieter, as if from a distance, said, "They're on to us, Marty!"

After the sound of some equipment being dropped to the floor and the sound of two sets of footsteps running away hurriedly, the light on the camera stopped flashing and the microphone fell silent.

**

* * *

5:06 PM **

Strong Bad had decided to try one of those real fruit smoothies for a change, but on his way to the stand, something caught his attention.

A wallet.

One the ground.

With an ID card in it.

Strong Bad picked up the card and examined it.

_BUBS CONCESSION STAND_

_FAMOUS ENTREPRENEUR_

_HOME PHONE: 412-555-BUBS_

_WORK PHONE: 1-800-OOHWATH_

_426 WORTHINGTON LANE _

T his means "Out of Here With All That Fear," which is the name of my infomerical._ Remember?_

"Heywassup."

"GAAH!" howled Strong Bad, seeing Homestar right next to him.

"This is awesome! Now you know where Bubso lives!"

"Um...Homestar..."

"I mean, that's really lucky, you finding his wallet and all."

"Homestar?"

"And with his ID card and everything."

"Um...look, Homestar..."

"And with his address on it!"

"Look right over there, Homestar."

"That's really fortunate."

"Homestar!"

"That's my name! Wear it out as you please!"

Strong Bad grabbed Homestar's bunny suit covered face and turned it to the side.

Homestar now saw the house he was in front of.

It was a large ranch-style mansion with a huge B above the door. All the windows were in the shape of B's, and the gate around the house read BUBS MANOR in gold letters. There was a large plaque with Bubs' image carved in marble on it, with the caption THIS IS BUBS' HOUSE. NO ENTRY UNLESS YOU ARE BUBS, OR HAVE PERMISSION FROM SAME, BECAUSE HE LIVES IN THIS HOUSE, WHICH IS 426 WORTHINGTON LANE.

"This is awesome! Now you know where he lives!"

"Hey, there's like $50 in here!"

"Yup, this is a lucky day."

"And a credit card!"

"Lucky day indeed."

"Some family pictures? Could be worth something on eBay."

"Lucky, lucky, lucky!"

"Shut up already!"

"Yes, ma'am."

**

* * *

7:34**

Back at Strong Bad's house, him and What's Her Face were carving pumpkins.

"I hear you made a new friend."

"So? What's it to ya?"

"What's his name?"

"Oh, Coach Z's gonna be all up in my face."

"I don't talk to that guy."

"You told him I was back on the sauce. Literally."

"That was an exception. He's still worried about you."

"I'm off it now you know."

"No, the other thing. Even though it was kinda funny what you said to the King."

"I was just sticking up for what I believed in."

"Well the world doesn't work like that. You can't just go around believing what you want to believe. You have to go by what others say it's cool to believe."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Not much does anymore."

"Got that right."

A metaphorical brick wall fell on Strong Bad.

"His name's Strong Sad."

"Strong Sad? Tough and sensitive? Like Robert De Niro."

"Feh. More like Robert—Smith—Da _Zero_."

Strong Bad realized he had unsuccessfully combined two insults at once.

"What?"

"What?"

"Huh?"

"Stop talking nonsense."

"Er..."

"That's right, er."

"What are you...? Nevermind. Let's see your pumpkin."

Strong Bad turned his jack-o'-lantern around. It was Homestar's face, complete with bunny ears.

"What is that? A chocobo with horns?"

"What? No! It's a—hmm...I can't think of a proper ending to this sentence."

**

* * *

8:14 PM **

"Thanks for meeting me here, Z."

"No problem, The Chort. What's up?"

"Strong Bad."

"How did I see that coming?"

"I'm his shrink."

"Oh, right."

"I think the problems Strong Bad's having is from his inability to cope with reality. He's trying to manifest what he perceives as the threatening things in his life into anger and mental illness."

"Ya sure he doesn't just want new glasses?"

"Coach, let me explain. Strong Bad has a lot of stuff in his life he sees as scary or intimidating. He's trying to understand this intimidation by inventing things in his mind. For instance—has he ever told you about Homestar?"

"What?"

"Homestar."

"Strumstar?"

"_Homestar_."

"Stairmaster?"

"_Homestar_."

"Ramrod?"

"_Homestar_!"

"Humphel?"

"H-O-M-E-S-T-A-R!"

"Hommisster?"

"HOMESTAR."

"Oh, now I get it!"

"Has he ever told you about him?"

"About who?"

"Homestar."

"Hamstray?"

The Cheat chucked his mug at Coach Z's head.

"Homestar!" shouted Coach Z. "Now I get it! Nope, never heard of the guy."

"He's this five foot tall guy in a bunny suit."

"That sounds like him!"

"I call it a _manifested hallucination_."

"What does that mean?"

"No idea. I just made it up. But it sounds impressive, huh?"

"You're sayin' that Strong Bad has an imaginary friend?"

The Cheat stared blankly at the Coach.

"Oh! I mean, _another_ imaginary friend?"

"The problem is, I don't think Strong Bad knows he's imaginary."

"What's your medical opinion there, The Chort?"

"I say I pop him some pills and make him cluck like a chicken."

"Medication and hypnosis?"

"Those are the technical terms, of course."

**

* * *

12:39 AM **

Strong Bad wandered into the bathroom and watched the mirror with tired eyes. After a few seconds, Homestar's face appeared.

"Hey man, good times a-rollin'?" he asked in the mirror.

Strong Bad curled his fingers around the thing he had brought with him.

He picked it up and hurled it at the mirror.

Homestar screamed and started to duck down.

The thing made contact with the mirror, which rippled furiously and finally settled down and returned to solidity. Homestar was gone.

The thing bounced off the mirror and fell to the ground.

Strong Bad watched it as it fell. He still had no idea why it didn't have batteries.


End file.
